City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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(Ed. Note: This story is part of our 2016-17 college season preview, six weeks of coverage that will span everything from Division I through Division III, junior college and more. To access our entire college of preseason content, check out our Season Preview Hub.)

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Earlier this offseason, CoBL spoke with each of the Division I coaches in the area for a Q&A session, and now we’re expanding it to include the various Division II programs in the CoBL coverage region.

With the first full-time D-II and D-III practices beginning on Oct. 15, we’ll be using the next few weeks to sit down with the area’s D-II head coaches and see where they’re at as they prepare for the 2016-17 season.

Last year, the program’s 10th under head coach John Sanow, the Huskies went 17-10, with a 15-7 record in PSAC East play, an improvement of seven wins overall and nine in conference play from the one before. The 2015-16 season also saw the emergence of Christian Mortellite into an elite scorer, as the now-redshirt junior averaged a team-high 19.0 ppg as the team’s only double-digit scorer.

Mortellite is back for two more years with a chance to lead Bloomsburg to its first NCAA Tournament since 1993-94, and he’s got a strong support cast that’s a mix of returners from last year and an infusion of talented transfers. Point guard Donell Diggs (9.1 ppg, 4.3 apg) is back for his second and final season in a Husky uniform, while reserve guards Alex Prislupsky (5.6 ppg, 2.8 rpg) will certainly see a bigger role in his junior year.

Sanow is banking heavily on the ability of several transfers, including Roman Catholic grad Carnell McGirt, a 6-7 forward, who was a third-team NJCAA All-American last year and averaged 19.2 ppg, 9.7 rpg and 2.9 apg in two years at Valley Forge Military Academy. Niagara transfer Karonn Davis, a Friends’ Central grad with two years of eligibility remaining, joins the team as an immediately-eligible Division I transfer, while Sam Saxton (Le Moyne), Kyle-Michael Rose (Highland CC) and Khyree Hunt-Hawkins (Baltimore County CC) are also all new to the program.

Here are the (copy-edited) highlights of our conversation with Sanow:

City of Basketball Love: Going into your 11th season now at Bloomsburg, you’ve finished your first decade at the school. When you reflect on that first 10 years, what sticks out to you?

John Sanow: Well, we felt like we’ve had an opportunity to compete in a very good league over the last 10 years and we’re still fighting to win a conference championship, that’s the goal of I believe every team in this league, and for us, that’s what we’re working hard towards every year. Over the last 10 years we’ve had some teams that had a chance to compete for a championship and that’s what we’re working towards with this group this year.

CoBL: Where have you seen the biggest change in your 10 years, whether within the program, the school, the league -- what’s most different now in 2016 compared to where it was in 2006?

JS: I think for us, for our program and for the sense of time I’ve been here, our league is one of the best leagues in the country, and every year you feel like there’s always four, five, six teams that have a chance to compete for the title. And I think this year’s no different, we feel that there’s probably about five, six teams going into this year that feel they have a good shot at winning the league, and we’re just hopeful that we’ll be in that mix this year as well.

CoBL: With two years left of Christian, you’ve got to feel pretty good about where our program’s at in the near future.

JS: We do...Christian has really developed as a player over the last two years. This year he’s in much better shape going into his junior year than he did coming into his sophomore year. He gained a lot of confidence with his year last year as a redshirt sophomore and did a good job of carrying the load, scoring the basketball for us. He’s a tough cover, every night he gets our opponent’s best defender and he’s really looking, this year, to be even more of a leader in our program, a guy that the new guys and the younger guys can look up to for him being such a quality player in this league.

CoBL: Talking about a kid who’s about to hit the 1,000 point mark in his third year of competition, had double the scoring average of anybody on the team. Did you have those sorts of expectations for him when you recruited him?

JS: We knew he could really shoot the basketball coming out of high school, but he’s shown that he’s more than just a shooter, he can really score the ball, he has the ability to go inside a little bit and work in the post. Obviously, the best part of his game is perimeter shooting, but he can get to the free-throw line, he can drive the ball and keep you honest, putting pressure on the defense as far as going to the basket. So he’s really evolved into more of a scorer than I thought he would be on this level coming out of high school.

CoBL: Last year, he was the only player on your team to average double figures, with a whole bunch of guys in that 6-to-9 point-per-game range. Are you comfortable with that again, or would you like to see someone step up as a secondary scorer? Who are you looking to on the roster to make that jump?

JS: Last year, Christian had to carry the weight of doing most of the scoring, but we feel this year that we’re going to be a little bit more well-rounded in our ability to score the basketball. We feel with the guys coming back, we feel that they’re much-improved in their overall game, and then the players that we brought in, guys like Karonn Davis and Carnell McGirt, I think are two guys that can score the ball and help us in that area. And I feel like last year’s point guard, Donell Diggs, is going to be more comfortable in our system and be able to score the ball even more than he did a year ago. Malik Snead, Kyle Rose, those guys inside have really improved their post player and we’re really looking to them to be able to score the ball inside more than they did a year ago.

CoBL: You mentioned Carnell and Karonn, two local guys -- Karonn played at Friends’ Central, Carnell at Roman, and both went to a different school before winding up at Bloomsburg this year. How have each of them changed since they played in high school?

JS: Well, I think both of them have matured in their game. Karonn and Carnell have gotten better since high school, I think Karonn particularly, very good with the ball in his hands, he’s also a very capable shooter, I think he’ll be very good in screen, screen-and-roll offense. Carnell, his ability to score the ball inside, his ability to block shots, his ability to run the floor and play on both ends of the floor I think have really developed since his high school days.

CoBL: Three guys we haven’t talked about, your freshmen: Peyton, Jordan and Maurice. What have you seen from that trio in practice, and what are your expectations for them as a group this year?

JS: The three freshmen have come in and done an excellent job in the preseason of just working hard every day, listening to the coaches and kind of following the upperclassmen in how they do things. And they’ve given us great effort, great energy in each of the workouts. At some point, they will make an impact on our program; I don’t know when that will be, but those three freshmen really have a lot of upside to them and we’re looking forward to them being a big part of our program this year and into the future.

CoBL: Last season, ended the year losing at Shippensburg and then lost to them again in the first round of the PSAC tournament. Have that one circled on the calendar?

JS: It was really a tough way to lose last year, last two games down at Ship. I know we were two teams that were very evenly matched, and they got us on their home floor and I know our guys were really motivated going into the summer, coming off that two-point loss at the buzzer and I think that’s really pushed our guys this summer and motivated us through the preseason to kind of get back to that level of play and hopefully get into that situation again and come out on top.

CoBL: I know you haven’t started official practices yet, but based on workouts, your knowledge of the team, what are you identifying as your biggest area of focus in the preseason?

JS: We felt like, we were in the top half of the league in scoring, in the top of the league defensively, so we want to continue to improve in those two areas. But the biggest thing we felt we needed to improve upon over the course of last year was our rebounding and our free-throw shooting. So we’re focusing in preseason on getting our guys in great shape so we can be better in all areas of the game, but rebounding, free-throw shooting, those are two areas where we feel if we can improve on, it’ll help us in the overall outcome of our season. We’re excited about where our team is right now, and we’re looking to bring everybody together, the new guys along with our veteran players, to create that chemistry and culture that we had from a year ago and just improve on what we’ve done, and hopefully going into this year have a mindset of defensively we’re going to be better, offensively we’re going to push the ball even more and play even more uptempo than we did a year ago.

CoBL: Anybody else on the roster we haven’t mentioned yet that you’re expecting to have an impact this year?

JS: Yeah, we have two other transfers, Khyree Hunt-Hawkins, who’s a junior college transfer, and Sam Saxton, from York, Pennsylvania, those two perimeter players I feel will have an opportunity to make an impact on our team this year. Both players are hard-working guys, guys that can score the ball, both players have a high basketball IQ and we feel like they’ll compliment what we like to do on both ends of the floor.

We have another junior, Alex Prislupsky, who helped us off the bench last year and we feel like as a junior now, he’s really coming into his own, playing with a lot more confidence, shooting the bsketball and playing on the defensive end. There’s also Darius Wallace, a redshirt sophomore from Delaware Valley Charter; he has the athleticism to be a good defender and rebounder and he continues to work hard on his perimeter shooting and ball handling.

CoBL: It seems like you guys have pretty good depth on the perimeter and the frontcourt --

JS: That’s a good point, we do feel like we have more depth than we’ve had in recent years at all positions. We feel like we can come in with guys off the bench and not miss a beat, and...we could play 10, 11 guys and not have any drop-off with starters or backups and we’re excited about having as much depth as we’ve had maybe since I’ve been here.

CoBL: Any final thoughts before we let you go?

JS: Just excited to get the year started. This time of the year, everybody’s getting geared up and getting ready through preseason workouts and individual instruction, weightlifting, conditioning. We feel like we have the talent here at Bloomsburg to compete in the PSAC and just looking forward to Oct. 15 and getting started with our season.