BY CHRISTIAN PHILLIPS<\/p>\n
Tiger basketball fans should be excited about both women\u2019s and men\u2019s basketball for the 2018 – 2019 season. Men\u2019s basketball head coach, Mark Johnson, has 11 returners coming back, and his fans should be familiar with their winning mentality. The only unanswered aspect that the FHSU men\u2019s team faces is the guy that puts the team on their back down the stretch. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe did lose Hadley Gillum, who was our leading scorer and I think that\u2019s our biggest question we have coming in,\u201d said Johnson. \u201cWe have more pieces to work with this upcoming season, but who\u2019s that guy that can go get you 17-18 a night – the guy who can carry you through late in games. So, I think that\u2019s what we will try and figure out.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Johnson also said senior forward Brady Werth was \u201cthe lead candidate\u201d going into the season to be their go-to guy. Werth averaged about 15 points-per-game in the last 11 games of the season. <\/span><\/p>\n The women\u2019s team is in a similar situation as the men. With a majority of the team returning for another run, Tiger fans can expect nothing but an improvement from a year ago (2017-18 record 26-7). Head Coach Tony Hobson is confident that his team can hit the floor running to start the season. <\/span><\/p>\n Most of the weight will fall on the shoulders of the two seniors, forward Tatyana Legette and guard Carly Heim. Hobson wasn\u2019t shy on giving his opinion on his two senior stars. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cCarly is a very steady player and not terribly flashy, she just gives us what we need on a game by game basis,\u201d said Hobson. \u201cShe\u2019s a good three-point shooter, but she doesn\u2019t take a lot of them because sometimes we don\u2019t need that. She\u2019s a good defender, and she\u2019s not great-great at anything, but she\u2019s way better than average at everything.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Regarding Legette, Hobson had similar remarks. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve seen flashes of improvement her first two years, but consistent wise she didn\u2019t give it to us every game and I think that\u2019s the biggest thing coming from high school to college,\u201d he said. \u201cIn high school, you have people physically outmatched and you can run over them, but it doesn\u2019t happen in college very often. You have to come ready to play every night, but last year she was just way more consistent. I think she also learned how to mentally prepare a little bit better, and knew what was coming and hopefully, she\u2019s ready for a good year.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n With both the Tiger men and women returning multiple key pieces, both Johnson and Hobson were quick to point out that each team should experience a high level of success. Johnson, in particular, doesn\u2019t feel that his team will lose any ground after leading scorer Gillum graduated and being picked 7th in the preseason poll.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s necessarily a rebuilding year. We were picked 7th in the polls, which is probably the lowest we\u2019ve ever been picked, not sure how much polls matter,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cWe feel like we have enough experience back and with the guys we\u2019ve added, we are expecting good things. If we stay injury free, then we are going to finish better than 7th.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Johnson also stated that he feels like the men\u2019s side of the league is a little more open compared to the last couple of years. <\/span><\/p>\n Hobson also said his team has the pieces to compete right away.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWell it\u2019s not a rebuilding year, I don\u2019t think we\u2019ve had a rebuilding year for the last seven years,\u201d Hobson said. \u201cWe should hit the floor running, last year we were very fortunate because everyone that had returned, we had about 6 players that had played a lot and every one of them had played better.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOnly time will tell, and expectations are fairly high for this team.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The men\u2019s team will open the 2018-2019 season on the road in Marshall, Minnesota as they take on Sioux Falls on November 9. While the women open the season with a pair of exhibition games against Division I Kansas and Kansas State before opening the regular season at home against Southwest Minnesota State also on November 9. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BY CHRISTIAN PHILLIPS Tiger basketball fans should be excited about both women\u2019s and men\u2019s basketball for the 2018 – 2019 season. Men\u2019s basketball head coach,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":41125,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Returning experience and depth bode well for Tiger Hoops in 2018-2019","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3394,7349,3395],"tags":[10937,4401,12206,604,12207,3466,3448,775,4399,1375,103,290,182],"class_list":["post-41123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mens-basketball-sports","category-sports","category-womens-basketball-sports","tag-brady-werth","tag-carly-heim","tag-christian-phillips","tag-fhsu-athletics","tag-fhsu-hoops","tag-fhsu-mens-basketball","tag-fhsu-womens-basketball","tag-mark-johnson","tag-tatyana-legette","tag-tiger-basketball","tag-tiger-media-network","tag-tmn","tag-tony-hobson"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/My-Post-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C629&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41123"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41134,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41123\/revisions\/41134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}