The East Central University men's basketball team will have a tough week ahead as they battle with two teams from the Great American Conference that are tied with them for second in the standings.  The Tigers will host Harding, Thursday, Jan. 7 at 7:30 p.m. and then Arkansas Tech, Saturday, Jan. 9 at 3 p.m. at the Kerr Activities Center.

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 Harding
The Bisons are 4-5 overall, but 3-1 in the GAC after losing two-straight games to Texas A&M-Commerce to end the 2015 portion of their season.  Harding has a +5.2 scoring and an even rebounding margin for the year, while shooting .457 overall and .357 from beyond the arc.

The Bisons technically have five players scoring over 10 points per game, but their top scorer (Andraz Kavas) was lost for the season due to injury.  Kavas was averaging 20.9 points and 6.6 rebounds per game.  Now the top scorer is Will Francis with 12.9 points and 4.0 boards per game.  Blake McNair adds 12.3 points and 4.8 rebounds per outing, while Stefan Andelkovic nets 11.3 points and Jacob Gibson 10.8 per game.
 
The Series
The all-time series against Harding has been a tight race, with ECU currently holding an 11-9 advantage after winning the last two meetings.  The Tigers have done well at the Kerr Activities Center over the years, with a 6-2 mark.

Scouting Arkansas Tech
The Wonder Boys come into this week's games with an 8-2 overall record and a 3-1 mark in GAC action.  ATU has won its last seven games and will have to face Southeastern (Thursday) before coming to Ada.

The Wonder Boys have a +5.5 scoring and +9.8 rebounding margin on the year and are shooting .435 overall and .342 from beyond the arc.

ATU has three players that are averaging double-digits in the scoring column, with Marquis Yates leading the way with 15.6 points and 4.5 boards per game.  Yates is a strong shooter, with a .444 overall percentage and a .404 mark from three-point range.  Tyler Corley adds 10.1 points per game, while Thomas Alexander nets 10.0.
 
The Series
The Wonder Boys currently hold a 14-10 lead in the all-time series after winning the last meeting.  However, the Tigers took two-of-three games last season and are 6-5 when playing at home against ATU.

Reeves Player of the Week
Junior Braxton Reeves was named the GAC Player of the Week for Jan. 4 after helping the Tigers to a 91-87 win over Missouri-St. Louis last Saturday.

The Fort Worth, Texas, native scored a career-high 28 points against the Tritons. Reeves went 9-of-14 from the floor and 7-of-9 from the 3-point arc. He added a season-high five assists and two steals, along with four rebounds. He also finished the victory as one of two Tigers in the game (Stirling Thomas) with 28 points and four rebounds.

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
ECU will hit the road for its first away contest in a month when they battle with Southwestern Oklahoma State, Thursday, Jan. 14 in Weatherford, Okla. at 7:30 p.m.  The Tigers will then end the weekend at home against Oklahoma Baptist, Saturday, Jan. 16 at 3 p.m.