Basketball: Catamounts open the season in Asheville

The Catamounts will open the 2012-13 season at Kimmel Arena against a UNC Asheville team which dominated the Big South Conference the past two seasons.

This is the regular season opener for both teams and gets underway on Friday, Nov. 9, at 7pm and will be televised regionally by WMYA (Channel 40).

However, the 2012-13 edition of the Bulldogs are minus four starters from last season's Big South regular season & tournament championship team. This year, Asheville was selected to finish the season in third place in the new "south division" of the divisional play the Big South Conference is starting this season.  Charleston Southern was picked by the coaches to win the new south division, with Coastal Carolina selected to come in second place.

The Bulldogs of head coach Eddie Biedenbach must replace four starters from last year's team, Matt Dickey, J.P. Primm, Chris Stephenson and Quinard Jacksonare.  Only Jeremy Atkinson returns from the starting five. Atkinson, a 6-5 forward, averaged 11.7 points and 6.6 rebounds per game, and was a Big South All-Tournament selection.

Asheville does return 8 lettermen, including 6-10 center D.J. Cunningham, who redshirted last season with to a knee injury.  Cunningham averaged 8.6 points and a team-high 7.2 rebounds per game two seasons ago.  Other than Cunningham, only sophomore Keith Hornsby, a 6-4 guard that averaged 4.0 points,  and forward Jaron Lane, a senior that averaged 11.5 points,  had significant playing time last season for the Bulldogs.

"This is a new year, and we've got a lot of work to do," said head coach Eddie Biedenbach. "You just don't replace players like J.P. Primm, Matt Dickey, Chris Stephenson and Quinard Jackson. Those guys played from their freshman year to the end of their senior seasons. That's a lot of experience." 

"However, we have a good group returning that knows what you have to do to have a successful season," added Biedenbach. "We'll have a little different team this year but we've got a chance to be a pretty good club before the year is over. We've got size up front, guards that learned under Primm and Dickey plus a talented freshman class that is ready to make an impact right away."

The Bulldogs opened exhibition play last Monday night against Brevard College with a 91-60 win over the Tornados. Keith Hornsby scored 18 points to lead the Bulldogs, with D.J. Cunningham scoring 16 points and pulling down 10 rebounds in his first action in two seasons

"We had good balance in our scoring tonight and played hard for the most part," said Bulldog coach Eddie Biedenbach after the game. "However, we had way too many turnovers (18) and gave up some uncontested shots that we should have given up. We also took too many quick shots but overall for an exhibition game we did a good job."