Basketball Lords post dramatic improvements

Directed by first-year head coach Matt Croci, the Kenyon men's basketball team completed a winter season filled with amazing accomplishments. The Lords closed out the 2003-04 campaign with a final overall record of 9-17 and a sixth-place finish in the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC), where their record was 6-10.

Those numbers alone won't drop a lot of jaws, but to put things more in perspective it should be noted that this year's Kenyon team had basically the same personnel as last year's 3-22 team.

"I'm really proud of the way the guys handled themselves this season," Croci said. "They played hard and bought into what the coaching staff was trying to accomplish. They were determined to change the way people thought about Kenyon basketball."

The Lords' nine wins this season matched the total number of wins produced by the previous two Kenyon basketball teams combined and equaled the most wins in a season by a Kenyon team since 1995-96, when the Lords were 10-15. The improvement of six more tallies in the win column was also the Lords' best turnaround in ten years.

The Kenyon men played well enough to earn a berth in the NCAC's post-season tournament for the first time in three years, and their sixth-place spot in the conference standings was the best Kenyon finish since the 1994-95 season.

The Lords wrapped up the regular season as the best free-throw shooting team in the conference. They ranked first in three-point field goals made and second in three-point shooting percentage. On an individual basis, sophomore Matt Formato's scoring average of 19.3 points per game was the third-best average among all players in the NCAC.