The Benedictine University men's basketball team is back in action tonight, opening a weekend road series at Aurora University. Friday night's contest is scheduled for a 7pm start with Saturday at 5pm.

HOW TO FOLLOW
The games will feature LIVE VIDEO and LIVE STATS from Aurora. Aurora is allowing a limited number of indoor spectators. Each dressed player is allowed to have two people attend the games this weekend.

This space will provide spectator details for all facilities weekly.

NATIONAL RECOGNITION
Even though there will be no NCAA Tournament this season, D3hoops.com is still producing national rankings each week. The first poll featured 10 teams and this week saw 15 teams ranked as more programs return to play. Benedictine picked up 17 votes this week. Benedictine is the fifth team listed among those receiving votes.

LAST TIME OUT
Benedictine swept Concordia Chicago last weekend in the conference openers on the road, using a team effort to pull away in both contests. Both games featured a big first-half run. The Saturday final was 88-41 and saw 15 players score and 20 take the floor.

Dominican played once last weekend and lost at home to Aurora on Saturday by a 95-80 count in the season opener for the visitors.

FIRST TIME STARTER
Marvin Agwomoh made the most of his first collegiate start on Saturday. Agwomoh scored the first four points of the game and eight of Benedictine's first 10. Included in the start were a pair of electrifying dunks. WATCH #1  WATCH #2

Agwomoh finished with 24 points and added eight rebounds. The 24 points were a career high and came in just 19 minutes of action. Agwomoh scored just six points in his entire freshman campaign.

SECOND TIME BETTER THAN THE FIRST
Benedictine has played two sets of back-to-back contests and in both weekends has improved upon the Friday result with a better performance on Saturday. Benedictine won the first game against Concordia Chicago by 14 points before winning the Saturday game by 47. Last weekend, Benedictine won the Friday game against Dominican by 13 points before securing a 26-point win on Saturday.

CONFERENCE SLATE
To comply with NCAA Covid testing requirements the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference has split the conference into north and south divisions. Teams will play on Fridays and Saturdays against opponents from in-division at the same site.  The NCAA canceled the Division III Tournament, but the conference is still planning to have a crossover tournament involving all teams at the end of the season.

15
At least 15 players saw action in the first three games of the season. At least 12 players have taken to the floor in each of the first five games of the year.

TWINSIES
The roster for Benedictine features a pair of twin brothers. Keegan and Kyle Graebner are juniors while Marvin and Kevin Agwomoh are sophomores. The Benedictine women's basketball team also has a set of twins with Jordan and Jessie Carlquist.

ADDITIONS
Benedictine has added three additional non-conference contests including a home-and-home with Lake Forest. Benedictine will welcome Wabash on February 17 while traveling to Lake Forest on February 20 with a home game on February 23. Keep visiting benueagles.com or Twitter (@benueagles1887) and Instagram (@benueagles) to keep up to date with all the latest schedule changes. The team is actively attempting to add as many games as possible.

WELCOME BACK
Benedictine welcomes back three starters from last season's NCAA Tournament team and 13 players who saw time last season. Nick Kosich was named as the NACC Freshman of the Year last season and joins Keegan and Kyle Graebner as returning starters. Michael Johnson has come back to Benedictine following a year at Robert Morris. Johnson may have been the conference's freshman of the year in 2018-19 but was ineligible for the award due to Benedictine's provisional NCAA Division II exploration. Johnson averaged 9.7 points per game that season while leading the team in steals and finishing second in assists.

2-0
Freshman Trevor Montiel wears the #20. Montiel is from Roselle and attended Lake Park. Kenny Bogus was the last player to wear #20. Bogus is also from Roselle and attended Lake Park. Bogus was part of a pair of conference championship teams that reached the NCAA Tournament and finished as a 1,000-point scorer and the program's all-time leader in blocks.

LAST SEASON
Benedictine and Aurora played only once last season. Benedictine scored an 82-45 win at home, breaking a three-game losing streak to Aurora.

REWIND
Benedictine won 20 games in 2019-20, boasting a 20-7 record. The team shared the NACC regular season championship and received an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament before falling to Susquehanna in a game at Wittenberg.

UP NEXT
Benedictine was scheduled to play Illinois Tech next weekend, but Illinois Tech has opted out of the fall and winter seasons in the NACC. Benedictine will play Wabash on Wednesday night at 6:00 p.m. and travel to Lake Forest next Saturday afternoon.

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