Team Preview: Young Harris

The wait is finally over! Tonight the Wake Forest Basketball Deacs kick off their season with an exhibition match-up against Young Harris at 7:00 in Winston-Salem. The Mountain Lions are a small four year liberal arts school in Young Harris, Georgia.

They are currently transitioning from the Georgia Collegiate Athletic Association to the NCAA at the D.II level. According to Wikipedia, they first tried to apply in 2010, but had their application rejected before re-applying the following year with success.

In July of 2012. Young Harris College became a member of the Peach Belt Conference (members include UNC-Pembroke and Francis Marion to name a couple).

In 2010 Young Harris reinstated its basketball program as part of the NCAA reinstatement process. The Mountain Lions last played basketball in 1970.

The Mountain Lions are coached by Pete Herrmann, who coached David Robinson in the late 80's while a coach at Navy. After a 5-21 record in 2010, Young Harris went 22-4 the following season, and has since gone 17-9 in consecutive seasons.

They have 3 seniors, no juniors, 4 sophomores and 7 freshmen, so Herrmann has his work cut out for him this year with the youth on his squad.

Senior Isaiah Johnson is probably the guy to watch tonight. The 6-0 senior guard from Brooklyn, NY averaged 16 points, 4 rebounds and 4 assists last year for the Mountain Lions.

This game probably shouldn't be much of a contest if Wake Forest wants to compete at all this season. The athleticism factor alone should be too much for Young Harris to overcome. Nonetheless it is a game where the guys can work on several things moving forward.

Always hard to predict a score in a situation like this because I'm not sure what exactly Coach Manning wants to work on, but I'll go with:

Wake Forest 94

Young Harris 58