Riding a 5-game winning streak after its run to the 2015 CollegeInsider.com Championship, the University of Evansville men’s basketball team will begin the 2015-16 regular season with a home game against Southeast Missouri State on Sunday at 2 p.m. inside the Ford Center.
Evansville officially opens its 97th season of play on Sunday against SEMO. In its previous 96 openers, UE has gone 64-32 while winning six of its last seven openers, the only loss in that span came in 2012 at Notre Dame. The Aces return all five starters and nine players overall from last year’s team that won the CollegeInsider.com Tournament and finished the season with a 24-12 record.
This year, UE played just one exhibition contest as they took on Wabash on Nov. 7. Evansville took the win by a 95-65 margin behind 20 points from D.J. Balentine. Balentine was 9-of-17 from the floor and recorded a game-high 8 assists. Adam Wing posted 17 points and hit an efficient 8 of his 10 shot attempts. It was another double-double for Egidijus Mockevicius as he tallied 11 points and 12 rebounds, all of his boards came on the defensive end. As a team, UE finished the game hitting 58.3% of its shots.
In the Missouri Valley Conference Preseason Poll, UE was picked to finish in second place behind only Wichita State. It is tied for the highest pick in program history. D.J. Balentine and Egidijus Mockevicius have each earned their share of preseason accolades with both earning a spot on the Preseason MVC All-Conference Team.
Balentine was named to the Lute Olson Award Watch List. The award is given annually to the top player in the nation who is a sophomore or older. Mockevicius was recognized on the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Award Watch List, which is handed out to the top center in the nation.
Southeast Missouri State posted a 13-17 mark last season while going 7-9 in the Ohio Valley Conference on their way to an 8th place finish. The Redhawks welcome new head coach Rick Ray to the program, Ray spent the last three seasons as the head coach at Mississippi State.  SEMO loses two of their top three scorers in Jarekious Bradley (16.2 PPG) and Nino Johnson (10.4 PPG), but return Antonius Cleveland.
Cleveland notched 10.8 points last year and shot 47.2% from the field, he was also third on the squad with 55 assists. As a junior last season, Isiah Jones averaged 9.8 points and was one of the top 3-point shooters on the team, hitting 39.9%. In their exhibition game, SEMO took down Missouri S&T by a final of 93-64, Trey Kellum and Marcus Wallace tied for the team lead with 15 points while Kellum was the top rebounder with nine.
