Tulane Men’s Basketball hosts LIU Brooklyn in 2017-18 season hoops opener

NEW ORLEANS – The Tulane men’s basketball team will tip off the 2017-18 regular season when it hosts LIU Brooklyn on Friday, November 10. The game is scheduled for 7 p.m., at Avron B. Fogelman Arena in the Devlin Fieldhouse and will be televised on ESPN3.

The Green Wave opens the season as the home team for the fifth straight season, which includes a neutral site contest against eventual national champion North Carolina last season at the Smoothie King Center. Tulane’s last win in a regular season opener came in a 75-64 victory over NJIT to start the 2013-14 campaign.

THE GREEN WAVE
• Tulane returns three starters for the 2017-18 campaign, including redshirt senior and 2017 American Athletic Conference Most Improved Player of the Year Cameron Reynolds, who led the team in scoring (17.0 ppg) and rebounding (6.8 rpg) last season.
• Junior Melvin Frazier ranked first in the conference in steals per game (1.9) and second on the team in scoring (11.5 ppg).
• Sophomore Ray Ona Embo was named American Conference Rookie of the Week twice during his debut season.
• The Green Wave welcomes seven newcomers this season, including five freshmen and a pair of transfers who sat out last season. Redshirt sophomore Samir Sehic arrives from Vanderbilt, while redshirt junior and New Orleans native Jordan Cornish comes from UNLV.

SCOUTING THE BLACKBIRDS
• LIU Brooklyn will play its first game under new head coach Derek Kellogg who held the same position for the last nine season at UMass. Prior to that, he was an assistant coach under John Calipari at Memphis for six seasons.
• The Blackbirds were picked to finish sixth out of 10 teams in the Northeast Conference’s preseason poll and lost their top three scorers from last season, including NEC Player of the Year Jerome Frink.
• Returning for LIU Brooklyn is redshirt senior Joel Hernandez who missed all of last season after averaging 12.2 points and 6.1 rebounds while being named to the NEC All-Tournament Team as a junior in 2015-16.
• Sophomore point guard Jashaun Agosto was an NEC All-Rookie Team choice after posting 11.2 points and 3.3 assists per game last year.

REYNOLDS CHASING 1,000 POINTS
• Cameron Reynolds enters his final season with 903 career points and needs just 97 more to become the 36th player in program history to eclipse 1,000.
• The last Tulane player to reach that number was Louis Dabney in 2015-16, who finished with 1,471 points which ranks No. 9 in program history.

INTERNATIONAL FLAIR
• Tulane’s 2017-18 roster includes five players born beyond the United States borders across four different continents: North America, South America, Europe and Africa.
• Ray Ona Embo (France), Bul Ajang (South Sudan), Sammis Reyes (Chile), Buay Koka (South Sudan) and Shakwon Barrett (Canada) all were born in their respective countries while Samir Sehic, born in Texas, spent several years of his childhood in Bosnia.

LOCAL FLAVOR
• Six members on Tulane’s 2017-18 Tulane roster hail not only from the state of Louisiana, but New Orleans itself.
• Riley Conroy (New Orleans, Jesuit), Jordan Cornish (New Orleans, Brother Martin), Caleb Daniels (New Orleans, St. Augustine), Melvin Frazier (Avondale, L.W. Higgins), Blake Paul (New Orleans, Landry-Walker) and Colin Slater (New Orleans, Immanuel [Calif.]) all hail from the Crescent City.

DOUBLE-FIGURE SCORING STREAK
• Cameron Reynolds begins the 2017-18 season with double-digit points in 18-straight games – the longest streak of his career. He reached double-figure points on 27 different occasions last season despite doing so just 10 times in his first two-plus seasons.

EXHIBITION EXTRAS
• Tulane won both of its preseason exhibitions in fashion, defeating LSU, 84-74, on Oct. 31, before rolling past Loyola New Orleans, 84-48, on Nov. 2.
• Against Loyola, four Green Wave players scored in double-figures, led by Samir Sehic’s 11 points and nine rebounds, while Ray Ona Embo added 11 points and a team-high three steals. Jordan Cornish chipped in 10 points and four assists, while Caleb Daniels also had 10 points.
• In the front court, Bul Ajang and Blake Paul each posted six points and as many rebounds, respectively.
• Tulane hosted LSU on the uptown campus for the first time in 43 years for a hurricane relief charity exhibition game on Halloween night, as the Green Wave bested the Tigers, 84-74.
• Cameron Reynolds and Jordan Cornish scored 17 points apiece and grabbed nine rebounds, respectively, while Samir Sehic added 16 points and six boards off the bench. Sophomore Colin Slater also contributed 11 points and four assists, while freshman Caleb Daniels tacked on 11 points.

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