SALEM, Va. (2/21/13) — Guilford College’s Josh Pittman (Archdale, N.C./Trinity) earned First Team All-Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC) basketball honors Thursday night at the league’s annual banquet in the Salem Civic Center. Sophomore teammate Matt McCarthy (Rockville, Md. /Good Counsel) received Third Team All-ODAC recognition.
Randolph College senior Colton Hunt captured the ODAC’s Kurt Axe Player of the Year Award and the WildCats’ Clay Nunley won the Bob Johnson ODAC Coach of the Year honor. Hunt also garnered his second straight ODAC/Farm Bureau Insurance Scholar-Athlete of the Year prize as chosen by conference sports information directors.
Pittman, a 6-1, 160-pound senior guard, joins Ben Strong ’08 as the Quakers’ only three-time First Team All-ODAC men’s basketball players. Pittman ranks second in the ODAC with 17.5 points per game and leads the league in assists (5.0 apg.) and assist-to-turnover ratio (2.1). He stands second in the conference to McCarthy with 3.1 threes per game and second to Hunt with a .833 free-throw percentage. Pittman has led Guilford’s scorers 16 times this season and has 10 20-point games. He averaged 19.0 points and 4.1 assists against league rivals this year.
For his career, Pittman ranks 15th in school history with 1,485 career points and is seventh all-time with 307 assists. His 250 career three-pointers stand second at Guilford.
McCarthy has assumed a greater role in his sophomore season and has found it very much to his liking. After averaging 5.0 points, 1.9 rebounds and 1.0 assists per game as a key reserve in 2011-12, he has dramatically increased his production as a sophomore starter. McCarthy has saved his best for last, registering back-to-back career highs in Guilford’s final two regular-season games of the season. He hit for 25 in the Quakers’ Feb. 13 win over Emory & Henry College and poured in 30 at Bridgewater College three days later as Pittman was sidelined by a stomach bug. McCarthy lifted Guilford to a 70-60 win in its ODAC Tournament opener Tuesday with all of his team-high 17 points in a six-minute stretch late in the second half.
McCarthy is the top scorer among ODAC sophomores with 13.9 points per game, which stands 10th overall. He also ranks 11th in the league in assists (2.7 apg.) and is third with 1.8 steals per game. McCarthy is shooting better than 43 percent from three-point land, the ODAC’s fifth-best figure, and leads the conference with 3.2 trifectas per game.
Coach Tom Palombo’s Quakers recorded an 18-8 overall record and earned the ODAC Tournament’s sixth seed with a 9-7 league mark. Tuesday’s win advanced Guilford into a quarterfinal contest Friday (2/22) at 8:00 p.m. versus third-seeded Randolph-Macon College. The tourney concludes Sunday (2/24) and all games are played in the Salem Civic Center.