'Cats Hold First Official Practice
9/26/2022 3:45:00 PM | Men's Basketball
With the start of the 2022-23 college basketball season 42 days away, Davidson held its first official practice Monday afternoon inside the Vance Athletic Center.
The Wildcats will tip the 2022-23 campaign on Nov. 7 when Guilford visits Belk Arena.
A return to the Charleston Classic and date with Purdue in the Indy Classic highlight the non-conference slate. Atlantic 10 conference play begins Dec. 28 at Fordham.
Under the direction of first-year head coach Matt McKillop, the Wildcats return two starters from last year's club that finished 27-7 overall and captured the 2021-22 Atlantic 10 regular season championship, while earning the program's 15th NCAA Tournament appearance.
Among those returning include second-team all-conference selection Foster Loyer and Sam Mennenga.
As a redshirt junior, Loyer averaged a team-best 16.2 points per game, led the country in free-throw percentage (93.6%) and finished fourth nationally in 3-point field-goal percentage, shooting 43.8 percent (74-169).
Mennenga averaged 8.4 points and 5.3 rebounds per game as a redshirt sophomore, while shooting 51.9 percent overall and 46.7 percent from 3-point range. Over his last eight contests, the 6-8 forward scored in double figures six times, including a career-high 18 points versus Richmond in the A-10 championship, capped by a 15-point effort against Michigan State on March's biggest stage, the NCAA Tournament.
Since joining the A-10 in 2014-15, Davidson has won two regular season titles (2015, 2022), a tournament title (2018), made three NCAA Tournaments (2015, 2018, 2022) and totaled 91 league wins (11.3 per year). The Wildcats have recorded an average finish of 4.0 in the 14-team conference and made the tournament semifinals each year.
Junior Grant Huffman (4.2 ppg | 2.3 rpg | 1.5 apg) and sophomore Desmond Watson (2.9 ppg | 1.3 rpg), both who made strong contributions down the stretch in 2021-22, are also back for the 'Cats.
In all, Davidson returns six letterwinners and welcomes the addition of transfers Connor Kochera (William & Mary) and David Skogman (Buffalo) and newcomers Reed Bailey (Harvard, Mass.), Riccardo Ghedini (Milano, Italy), Sean Logan (Westfield, N.J.), Chris Sosnik (Washington, D.C.) and Achile Spadone (Geneva, Switzerland).
Over the summer, Joshua Heyliger was promoted to assistant coach, Matt Matheny returned to the Wildcat bench where he spent 16 seasons before serving as the head coach at Elon and Matt Williams '16 was named the director of operations.
