PITMAN, N.J. – The TCNJ men's basketball team was picked second in the NJAC preseason poll, released Thursday afternoon by the league office.
 
The Lions received four first-place votes from the league's head coaches, who also gave four first-place nods to Montclair State, with the Red Hawks narrowly perched atop the preseason projections. Stockton was third, and Rowan was fourth with a pair of first-place votes. Kean (fifth) and Ramapo (sixth) rounded out the predicted playoff field, while New Jersey City, Rutgers-Camden, Rutgers-Newark, and William Paterson occupied the last four spots.
 
The reasons for hype and optimism are plentiful under first-year head coach Evan Elberg. The Lions, sitting at No. 24 in the D3hoops.com preseason rankings, return four starters from a team that earned the program's first NCAA at-large bid since 1990, headlined by senior superstars Nick Koch and Matthew Solomon.
 
Koch played to first team All-NJAC recognition and second team All-Region honors from both the NABC and D3hoops.com last season, when he Averaged 21.4 points, 4.4 assists, and 3.8 rebounds per game. He ranked third in the NJAC in scoring (20.8 points per game) and fourth in assists (4.1 per game) in league play, shooting 45.6 percent from the field, also leading the league in total field goals (219, 14th nationally).
 
Solomon earned All-NJAC honorable mention for the second year in a row after nearly averaging a double-double with 11.6 points and 9.8 rebounds per game a season ago. He led the NJAC in rebounds per game and double-doubles (11), ranking in the top-30 in Division III in both categories while shooting 51.6 percent from the field and ranking third on the team with 81 assists.
 
Koch and Solomon both turned in monster performances in the first-round NCAA loss to Pitt-Bradford, with Koch pouring in 32 points and Solomon grabbing a program-record 22 rebounds to go with 20 points in a furious second-half comeback effort.
 
The Lions' devastating duo will have ample support in senior sharp-shooter Jonathan Okocha, who averaged 8.5 points per game and topped the squad with 59 3-pointers, and junior David Alexandre, who posted 11.1 points per game and was fifth in the NJAC with 91 assists.
 
Khalid Bakare (13.1 minutes per game) and Anthony Milligan (12.9) saw significant minutes last season, and TCNJ boasts a bevy of promising sophomores and first-years to bolster the rotation.
 
After returning to Ewing, where he spent four seasons as an assistant before stints at Gettysburg and Saint Peter's, Elberg and his charges have their sights set on a second NJAC title in three years and a matching of the program's longest NCAA Tournament streak.