United States Coast Guard Academy - Department of Athletics - Men's Basketball - Johnson Named to Sporting News Preseason All-America team

NEW LONDON, CONN.--(10/10/08)--Coast Guard Academy senior forward Craig Johnson has been named a preseason honorable mention All-America by The Sporting News for the second straight season.

Johnson and the Bears, won the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) tournament championship and made a magical run all the way to the Elite 8 of the Division III NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history. The team finished with a school-record 24 wins (24-7) and was ranked 15th in the final D3hoops.com Top 25 poll, the program’s first ever national ranking.

He led Coast Guard last season with 14.4 points, 8.6 rebounds and a .549 field goal percentage. He was a first-team All-conference selection for the second time in his career and he was named to the D3hoops.com All-Northeast region and ECAC New England second team.

Johnson, who took a religious sabbatical during the 2006-2007 season, set the single-season school record with 507 points in the 2005-06 season when he earned first team All-conference honors and was named to the D3hoops.com All-region second team. He averaged 19.5 points and 10.2 rebounds per game. Johnson led the NEWMAC in field goal percentage (.613), was third in scoring (19.5) and second in rebounding (10.2). He became the first Coast Guard player to score over 30 points four times in one season.

Johnson and Jimmy Bartolotta from MIT, who was also named honorable mention, are the only two players from the NEWMAC named to the team.

Coast Guard will have its first practice on the season on Wednesday and the Bears will open the season on Nov. 15th at 1 p.m. vs. Colby Sawyer at the UMass Dartmouth Tip-Off Tournament.