Croci & Roy Highlight D3hoops.com All-Region Squad
Croci was named the D3hoops.com Great Lakes Coach of the Year, while Chad Roy landed on the region's second-team.
SPRINGFIELD, Ohio-- The awards continued to roll in for Chad Roy and Matt Croci, as Roy was named to the d3hoops.com second team All-Great Lakes Region, while Croci was named the d3hoops.com 2017-18 Great Lakes Coach of the Year. These awards come a day after Roy was named first-team all-region by the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC), and Croci was named Great Lakes Coach of the Year.
Croci guided the Tigers to their first outright NCAC title since 2012 with a 16-2 mark against league foes and also helped them earn their first NCAC Tournament crown since 2006 with an 82-70 win over Ohio Wesleyan in the championship game. The Tigers not only swept the regular season NCAC titles, but also opened the season with a remarkable 22-game winning streak, before ending the 2017-18 campaign with a 27-3 record after falling to Wis.-Oshkosh in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Croci was also named the NCAC Men's Basketball Coach of the Year for the second time in his career after also earning the recognition as Kenyon's head coach in the 2007-08 season. Croci's NCAC honor served as the sixth time that a Wittenberg coach has won NCAC Coach of the Year. For the second time, Croci stands as the only person to win NCAC Player of the Year and NCAC Coach of the Year.
Roy, who is the 33rd player in program history to score 1,000 career points, finished his senior campaign with 481 points (16.0 ppg) and 182 total rebounds (6.1 rpg), while also shooting 63 percent (178-of-283) from the field and 76 percent (121-of-159) at the free throw line. Roy was also selected as the NCAC's Top Defensive Player throughout the conference season after anchoring the Tigers' defensive unit that limited NCAC opponents to a league-low 67.2 points per game. In 18 conference games, he ranked sixth among league players in rebounding with 80 total boards (6.4 rpg) and 16th overall in blocked shots with 10. He notched a pair of double-digit rebounding performances against conference foes with 11 in an 87-67 win over Kenyon and 10 in an 87-58 win at Allegheny, while his season-high mark in blocks also came against an NCAC foe with three in the 76-64 win over DePauw on January 24th.
Wittenberg finished the 2017-18 campagin 27-3 and 16-2 in NCAC play. NCAC coaches voted Wittenberg to finish third in the preseason poll. The Tigers didn't enter the national rankings until Jan. 1. From there Wittenberg has climbed from No. 17 to No. 10 to No. 5 to No. 3 in the D3Hoops.com poll. 22 in a row served as Wittenberg's first double-digit win streak since 2013-14 when they won 11 games in a row, a season that saw the Tigers finish 21-8. Before running the table in NCAC regular season play, the Tigers opened the year with non-conference wins against Mount St. Joseph, Birmingham-Southern, Capital and Otterbein.
Players were nominated for these awards by Sports Information Directors at various schools.