Mansfield, Mass. – Le Moyne College junior guard
Russell Sangster (Rockville, Md./Bullis School) and head coach
Patrick Beilein have received major awards from the Northeast-10 Conference as the conference announced its end-of-season awards and all-conference teams on Thursday. The award winners and all-conference teams were voted upon by the league's 15 head coaches, who could not vote for their own players.
Sangster was named the NE10 Defensive Player of the Year, while also earning a spot on the all-conference second team. Beilein was selected by his peers as the NE10 Coach of the Year.
Sangster, who earns his first career NE10 recognition, is the third player in the program's 21 years in the conference to be tabbed as the league's top defender, while he is the fifth player to earn a major award. Previous Dolphins to earn major awards were John Tomsich (1999 Defensive Player), Trent Morgan (2005 Freshman), Jason Holmes (2008 Defensive Player) and Laurence Ekperigin (2009 Player). He is also the first Dolphin to earn as high as second-team all-conference honors since Kevin Roth '11 in 2010-11. Sangster, who is tasked with defending the opposing team's top scorer, anchors a defense that allows just 64.8 points per game and holds opponents to just 42.6-percent shooting from the field. The 64.8 points per game is the best in the conference and region and the eighth-best in the nation, while the 42.6-percent is the best in the conference and sixth-best in the region. Sangster leads the Dolphins with 32 steals and has blocked seven shots.
On the offensive end of the court, Sangster leads the Dolphins in scoring with a career-best 11.8 points per game. He is one of just four players in the conference with at least 300 points, 100 rebounds, 75 assists and 30 steals. He has scored in double figures in 16 games and eclipsed the 20-point mark on three occasions.
Beilein, who is in his second year in charge of the Dolphins, is the first Le Moyne leader to earn NE10 Coach of the Year honors. He has guided the Dolphins to a 21-5 record, which includes a Southwest Division-best 16-4 mark in conference action. The Dolphins have been the top-ranked team in each of the first two East Regional rankings that have been released by the NCAA. The Dolphins, who are ranked 24th in this week's NABC/Division II National rankings for the first time since November 24, 2009, have 21 wins in a season for just the third time in the program's 69-year history (1987-88 and 1995-96, both teams were also 21-5). Picked to finish fourth in the Southwest Division in the preseason coaches' poll after going 7-13 in the league last year, the Dolphins captured their first regular season title in 21 years in the conference. Dating back to the start of December, the Dolphins have won 17 of 19 games, including win streaks of 10 and seven games. They have multiple seven-game win streaks in a season for just the third time in the program's history (1950-51 and 1987-88).
The Dolphins have drained 247 three-pointers, the most in a season in the program's history, eclipsing the previous most of 229 from the 1993-94 season. The team's scoring defense (64.8) joins the 1983-84 team (John Beilein's first season) as the only teams to allow less than 65 points per game since the mid-1960s. The Dolphins average 74.5 points per game, the highest since the 2000-01. The team's scoring margin of 9.8 is the second-best in the program's history and the best since the 1964-65 season (10.4). Their free throw percentage of 74.3 is the fourth-best in the program's history and the best since the 1994-95 season.
The Dolphins open Northeast-10 Conference Championships play as the top seed in the Southwest Division on Sunday at Ted Grant Court at 3:00 p.m. The Dolphins will face either Northeast Division fourth seed Merrimack College or Southwest Division fifth seed New Haven. The Warriors and Chargers play in North Andover, Massachusetts on Friday at 7:00 p.m.
