INDIANAPOLIS (10/15/2019) -- Coming off a sensational rookie campaign, the nation's leading returning scorer picked up an early preseason accolade as University of Detroit Mercy sophomore
Antoine Davis was named the Horizon League's Preseason Player of the Year on Tuesday.
Davis - the 2019 HL Freshman of the Year - is the first Titan to earn the preseason honor since Ray McCallum in 2012.
Last season, he finished third in the nation and led the Horizon League in offense at 26.1 points per game, just the fifth Titan to lead the league in scoring and the first freshman in conference history to accomplish that feat.
He sank a NCAA freshman record 132, 3-pointers, breaking the mark held by Stephen Curry, and that number ranked him second in school history and fifth in the Horizon League record book.
As a freshman, he posted 23, 20-point games, nine 30+ point outings and a pair of 40-point explosions, including a Titan and Horizon League freshman record 48 points against Wright State, one point shy of the school record and the sixth most in HL play, tying a school mark with 10 triples in that contest. His 784 points on the year was second in school history, one away from the school record, a HL freshman record and the fourth-most in league history.
He would end his rookie campaign top 10 in the country in 3-pointers per game (4.40-second), total 3-pointers (132-fifth), field goals (263-12th) and total points (784-10th), all Horizon League highs. He was also second in the Horizon League and 41st in the nation hitting 85.7 percent at the free-throw line, led the conference and was 13th in the nation in minutes played at 37:22 and was 12th with a 1.1 assist-turnover ratio. In Horizon League play, he was eighth in assists with a team-high 3.6 per game and his 107 assists on the season was the most by a Titan since McCallum in 2012-13.
Davis made a name for himself right from the start in 2018-19, recording eight-straight 20-point games, the first Titan to have eight-straight games with 20 points or more since Willie Green in 2002-03, along with back-to-back 30-point performances to start his collegiate career before he set and broke the Titan freshman record for scoring with 42 points against Loyola Maryland and 48 versus Wright State.
At the conclusion of the season, he earned Freshman All-American honors from CollegeInsider.com and was on the Lou Henson All-America Team as well as a finalist for the USBWA Wayman Tisdale Award for National Freshman Player of the Year with three players who would go on to be selected in the first seven picks of the 2019 NBA Draft in Duke's RJ Barrett and Zion Williamson and North Carolina's Coby White.
Season and single-game tickets are now on sale and can be purchased by clicking here. For more information on tickets, contact Director of Ticket Operations & Sales
Justin Hairston at 313-993-1700 ext. 7301 or at
hairstjj1@udmercy.edu.
Preseason Player of the Year
Antoine Davis, Detroit Mercy
First Team
Antoine Davis, Detroit Mercy
Jalen Tate, Northern Kentucky
Xavier Hill-Mais, Oakland
Tarkus Ferguson, UIC
Loudon Love, Wright State
Second Team
JayQuan McCloud, Green Bay
Tyler Sharpe, Northern Kentucky
Marcus Ottey, UIC
Bill Wampler, Wright State
Darius Quisenberry, Youngstown State
2019-20 #HLMBB Preseason Poll Results
School (1st-place) – Votes
Wright State (28) – 350
Northern Kentucky (5) – 295
UIC (1) – 280
Oakland (1) – 229
Green Bay – 207
Youngstown State – 186
Milwaukee – 146
Detroit Mercy – 133
IUPUI – 92
Cleveland State (1) – 62
