Cole Bond, Zack Leahy Earn National Academic Awards
Pair of Tigers earn mention from the National Association of Basketball Coaches for their work on the court and in the classroom.
Springfield, Ohio – A year after Wittenberg University’s men’s basketball program placed a national-best eight student-athletes on the 2012 National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) Honors Court, a pair of Tigers earned recognition for their athletic and academic accomplishments during the 2012-13 season.
Guard Zack Leahy (Rossford, Ohio/Rossford) and forward Cole Bond (Canton, Ohio/St. Thomas Aquinas), both of whom will be seniors in the 2013-14 season, earned spots on the 2013 Honors Court list. To qualify for inclusion on the NABC Honors Court list, a student-athlete must be either a junior or senior and a member of the varsity team while maintaining a 3.2 grade point average or better.
Leahy averaged 12.0 points and 3.5 rebounds per game in 2012-13, his second season in the Red & White after transferring from the University of Toledo. A starter in all 27 games, Leahy ranked third on the team with 62 assists, while he led the Tigers with 28 steals in a team-high 30 minutes of action per game.
Bond appeared in all 27 games, starting 14, in the 2012-13 season. He averaged 2.6 points and 3.0 rebounds en route to earning his first varsity letter.
In addition, Wittenberg was among the teams to earn an inaugural NABC Team Academic Excellence Award, which was created this year by the organization's Committee on Academics to recognize outstanding academic achievement by a team with a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or better for an entire school year.
Wittenberg, which has the most wins and highest winning percentage in NCAA Division III history, posted records of 17-10 overall and 9-7 in the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) in 2012-13. The Tigers are expected to welcome eight letterwinners back to the line-up for the 2013-14 season, which starts with an exhibition game on Friday, Nov. 8, at Western Carolina University, an NCAA Division I program coached by former Tiger head coach Larry Hunter.