Texas Pan-American Broncs
Friday, December 19, 8:00pm
Omaha
Last Season: The Broncs — not Broncos — finished with a 9-23 record (5-11 in the WAC) in 2013-14. UTPA’s three conference road wins were their most in a season since 1994-95, when they were in the Sun Belt, and they had a remarkable ability to play competitively for 30 minutes only to fail to close out games. This list of 13 games they conceivably could have won must be maddening for Broncs fans.
Last Meeting/All-Time Series: Creighton and UT-Pan American have never met.
Head Coach: Dan Hipsher is in his second year at UT-Pan Am after stints as the head coach at Stetson (1993-95) and Akron (1995-2004), and as an assistant coach at Arkansas (2004-07), South Florida (2007-09), and Alabama (2009-13).
Top Returners: UTPA has just two lettermen returning from last year’s team, and they’re both named Shaquille. Senior guard Shaquille Boga and junior forward Shaquille Hines are dubbed as The Shaq Attack, and that’s not just a clever marketing gimmick; they’re solid players. In his first season with the Broncs, Boga took over at point guard and averaged 14.0 points, 3.5 rebounds, 3.3 assists and a WAC-best 2.1 steals in 31 games. He also led the WAC in assist-to-turnover ratio at 1.84.
Meanwhile, Hines averaged 12.8 points and 6.3 rebounds overall, and improved both numbers in conference play, averaging 14.3 points and 7.1 rebounds against WAC opponents. The same held true for his shooting percentage, as he shot .514 in WAC play while shooting .488 overall.
Key Losses: 12 players are gone from a year ago, which might be the most losses from one season to the next that I’ve ever heard of. It’s too much turnover to go into in depth, so here’s a simple list of the guys from the 2013-14 team who are no longer around: Jacob Raspopovich, Blake Provost, LJ McIntosh, Javorn Farrell, Jamal Dantzler, Lauri Toivonen, Shaun Noriega, John Cleveland, Hurley Johnson, Justin Leathers, Marcel Simon, and Alex Majewski.
Whew.
Of all of those departures, the one that hurts the most is undoubtably Javorn Farrell, who was the Broncs top player a year ago. He averaged 16.1 points, 5.4 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 1.6 steals in 28 games (27 starts), and ranked eighth in the WAC in scoring.
Key Additions: By the same token, that means there’s a plethora of newcomers. Ole Miss transfer Janari Joesaar, a 6’6″, 208 pound sophomore, received a waiver from the NCAA and can play immediately. Ranked as a three-star prospect by Rivals out of high school, Joesaar didn’t have overwhelming numbers at Ole Miss — in 12 games for the Rebels last season, he averaged 2.3 points, 1.5 rebounds and 4.3 minutes per contest. However, he shot 47.4 percent (9-for-19) from the field and 80 percent (8-for-10) from the line, and had a nice game at Arkansas, where he scored eight points and had seven rebounds.
Everett Osborne, a Top 100 Juco recruit, joins the program after averaging 13.4 points, 6.3 rebounds and 1.6 assists per game this past season for Los Angeles Trade Tech. In conference play, he bumped his numbers up to 19.0 points, 6.4 rebounds and 1.6 assists per game, and the guard is expected to play significant minutes at all three guard positions.
