After two weeks off for the holidays the East Central University men's basketball team returns to the Kerr Activities Center to host Missouri-St. Louis, Saturday, Jan. 2 at 2 p.m.

Game Notes

The Broadcast
ECU's radio home for Tigers basketball in 2015-16 is Ada's KXFC, 105.5, FM 'The X-Factor'. Kenny Morrison returns to broadcast the games for his 19th season. Morrison, a 1987 ECU graduate, spent two seasons doing color prior to taking over the play-by-play duties during the 1997-98 season.  

The Coverage
Fans who can't be at the game can find links to live stats, live video (if available) and the KXFC radio broadcast on ECUTigers.com.  Go to the men's basketball schedule page. Fans can listen to the radio broadcast online or through the FREE KXFC App available in ITunes, Google Stores where apps are sold and www.kxfcradio.com.

Scouting Missouri-St. Louis
The Trojans are 6-5 overall and 0-3 in the Great Lakes Valley Conference and have also had two weeks off, with their last game resulting in a 73-71 win over Saint Leo (Dec. 20).  UMSL has kept things close with its opponents, holding a +4.8 scoring and -1.8 rebounding margin for the year.  The Trojans and their opponents have done well shooting, with UMSL recording a .460 team overall shooting percentage and a .407 mark from beyond the arc.  Their opponents are shooting .428 overall and just .328 from three-point range.

The Trojans have three players that are averaging over 10 points per game, but one of those has missed the last two games.  Brandon Marquardt leads UMSL with 14.9 points and 3.5 boards per game, while shooting .510 overall and .531 from beyond the arc.  Joseph English adds 10.4 points, 4.0 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game, while shooting .434.  Cortez Conners has missed two games, but is averaging 10.1 points and 3.7 rebounds per game and shooting .478 overall and .514 from three-point range.
 
The Series
Saturday's game will be the first meeting between the teams.

Nearly a Triple-Double Day
Senior Deron Hill had a strong overall game for the Tigers against Southwestern Adventist, just barely missing a triple-double, with career highs of 13 points, 10 rebounds and nine assists.

Thomas Repeats at Player of the Week
Senior Stirling Thomas was named the GAC Player of the Week for Dec. 7.  This was the second honor for Thomas this season, after earning the award in the first week of the season.

Thomas he averaged 30.0 points per game in wins against Henderson State and Ouachita. The Elgin, Okla., native made 12-of-18 shots, with four 3-pointers against the Reddies and followed up with 27 points against OBU, last season's GAC regular-season champion.

The win against Ouachita Baptist in Arkadelphia, Ark., was the first time since Feb. 22, 2014 that OBU had given up a win at home.  That streak includes a perfect 13-0 mark at home in 2014-15 and ended at 15 games.

Free Throw Frenzy
With the rule changes in the NCAA this season it was expected that free-throw attempts would go up, but the Tigers and Dallas Baptist went a little higher than expected with almost 100 attempted between them.  ECU went 35-of-47 from the charity stripe, while DBU was 40-of-50, for 97 attempts.  The Tigers' Stirling Thomas made the most of his trips to the line, going 15-of-16 and scoring almost half of his 36 points for the game.

Early Signing
ECU announced the addition of one player to the 2016-17 roster during the early signing period in Camron Talley.

Talley comes to the Tigers from Rockwall-Heath High School in Rockwall, Texas.  He has been a starter for the Hawks since his freshman season and averaged 15 points, five rebounds and five assists per game as a junior.

Talley has been a standout since his freshman season, earning all-district first team honors all three seasons and averaging 14 points and 12.9 points per game in sophomore and freshman seasons, respectively.

Starting Strong
ECU started the year by playing two back-to-back exhibition games at Oklahoma State and UTEP.  While, the Tigers fell in both meetings, they kept the score close for most of the games and only fell by 12 at UTEP.

Stirling Thomas led ECU in the two exhibitions with 12.5 points per game, while adding 3.5 boards.  Transfer Brett Cannon added 9.0 points per game, while freshman Ben Brown-White led the team with 8.5 rebounds per game.

Up Next
The Tigers will remain at home for most of January and will wrap up a four-game home stand, Jan. 7-9 when they restart the GAC portion of the season when they host Harding (Jan. 7 - 7:30 p.m.) and Arkansas Tech (Jan. 9 - 3 p.m.).  ECU will be at home for six of its 10 games during the month of January.