- William and Mary will attempt to extend its winning streak to three games Saturday in a regionally televised game at George Mason ... The game can be seen on Comcast SportsNet (Mid-Atlantic) and Metro Channel (NY) ... Steve Buckhantz and Glenn Consor will call the action ... The Tribe enters the game with a record of 6-13 overall and 3-7 in the Colonial Athletic Association ... The Patriots come in at 12-6 (5-4 CAA).

Complete game notes (PDF, 448 KB)

Top Storylines
W&M is led by first-year head coach Tony Shaver ... Shaver put together a record of 358-121 (.747) in an outstanding 17-year career at Division III Hampden-Sydney prior to joining the Tribe ... While there, he led the Tigers to eight Old Dominion Athletic Conference championships, 12 20-win seasons and 11 NCAA Tournament appearances (including trips to the Final Four in 1999 and 2003).

Senior forward Adam Hess was voted the 2003-04 CAA Preseason Player of the Year by the league's media ... Through Jan. 30, Hess leads the CAA in scoring with 19.3 points per game, and is ranked in the top-15 in the league in seven other categories ... He has a total of 1,371 points in his career, including 246 in his freshman season at Eastern Michigan and is the 27th player to score 1,000 points in a W&M uniform.

Freshman forward Corey Cofield is making a strong case for CAA Rookie of the Year honors, currently the only freshman ranked in the top-20 in the league in both scoring and rebounding ... He is tied for 16th overall and the second-highest scoring freshman with 12.3 points per game, and is 11th overall and second among rookies with 5.5 rebounds per game ... Cofield also is tops on the team and is fourth in the conference with a .576 field goal percentage ... In his last five games he is averaging 19.0 points and 7.6 rebounds ... Cofield has been named CAA Rookie of the Week twice this season (Jan. 12 and Jan. 26).

Coach Shaver's up-tempo style of play has led the Tribe to break the 80-point barrier seven times this season, including two games of 90 points or more ... W&M combined for 185 points in its last two games, the most points scored by the Tribe in consecutive games since the 1975-76 season with a 107-102 win at Richmond (Feb. 21) and a 90-100 loss to third-ranked Rutgers (Feb. 25).

Cofield Named CAA Rookie of the Week Again
For the second time in the last three weeks, freshman forward Corey Cofield was selected as the CAA Rookie of the Week ... Most recently he earned the award on Jan. 26, after a two-game stretch in which he averaged 22.5 points and 9.0 rebounds per game, while shooting 68.0% (17-25) ... One of those games was at Hofstra, in which he recorded his first career double-double with 21 points and 11 rebounds ... Just hours after he earned the award on Jan. 26, he helped lead W&M to a win against ODU, recording his second double-double with 15 points and 10 rebounds ... He also earned the award on Jan. 12, following a three-game stretch in which he averaged 17.7 points and 5.7 rebounds per game, while shooting 66.7% (22-33) from the field ... This season he is tied for second on the team with 12.3 points and is third with 5.5 rebounds per game ... Cofield is fourth in the conference with a .576 field goal percentage.

W&M's Adam Hess Voted CAA Preseason Player of the Year
Senior forward Adam Hess was voted the 2003-04 Colonial Athletic Association's Preseason Player of the Year by the media at the conference's annual media day, held at the Washington, DC ESPNZone on October 29 ... Hess was also projected by Sporting News as the league's best player ... No W&M player has ever been named CAA Player of the Year at the end of the season ... Only twice in history has a Tribe men's basketball player been selected as any league's player of the year ... Jeff Cohen (1961) and Tom Jasper (1971) were each named Southern Conference Player of the Year ... Hess has been unanimously picked to be the only player this season to repeat as a first team All-CAA honoree, including predictions by the conference's coaches and media and numerous publications, including Athlon, Basketball News, Lindy's, Sporting News, and Street & Smith's.

Fabulous Freshman
Forward Corey Cofield is making a strong case for CAA Rookie of the Year honors this season ... Through Jan. 30, he is tied for 16th in the CAA overall and second among the league's freshmen with 12.3 points per game, and he is 11th overall in the conference with 5.5 rebounds per game, also the second-best total for a freshman ... He leads all CAA rookies and is fourth in the league with a .576 field goal percentage ... In his last five games, Cofield is averaging 19.0 points (including two 20-point games) and 7.6 rebounds.

Happy Birthday Coach
W&M head coach Tony Shaver celebrated his 50th birthday on Wednesday with a 99-86 Tribe win at James Madison ... Shaver was born on Jan. 28, 1954.

Seeing Improvement
Three players in particular this season, senior Zeb Cope, junior Nick D'Antoni and sophomore Taylor Mokris are seeing significant improvement under first-year head coach Tony Shaver ... Each of the three has more than doubled his scoring average from last season ... Cope has recorded the only two double-doubles of his career with 21 points and 11 rebounds in games at VCU (12/6) and against Drexel (1/17) ... He has also been given the green light to shoot from the outside, and is connecting on a team-best 36.1% (22-61) of his shots from the three-point line, after shooting just 1-4 from long range in his first three seasons ... With a team-high 102 assists, D'Antoni already has more than tripled the 27 he compiled all of last season and is currently second in school history with a single-season average of 5.4 assists per game in 2003-04.

Killer Cs
Senior forward Zeb Cope and rookie forward Corey Cofield are each having outstanding seasons for the Tribe this year ... Cope has started all but one of W&M's games, leading the team with 6.3 rebounds per game, tied with Cofield for second with an average of 12.3 points per contest and second with a .486 field goal percentage ... Arguably the most improved player in the league this season, he is more than tripling his career scoring average (3.5 ppg), more than doubling his career rebounding average (3.1 rpg) and shooting more than 70 points higher than his career field goal percentage (.410) entering this season ... Cope has both of his career double-doubles this year, each being 21-point, 11-rebound efforts (at VCU and home against Drexel) ... A Rookie of the Year candidate in the CAA this season, Cofield has started the last 12 games for W&M, leading the Tribe with a .576 FG%, tied with Cope for second on the team with an average of 12.3 points and third with 5.5 rebounds per game ... He has two double-doubles this season, with 21 points and 11 rebounds at Delaware (1/21) and 15 points and 10 rebounds against ODU (1/26) ... He has twice been named CAA Rookie of the Week (Jan. 12 and Jan. 26).

Helping Hand
Junior point guard Nick D'Antoni has returned to the level of play that earned him CAA All-Rookie accolades two seasons ago ... The nephew of Phoenix Suns head coach Mike D'Antoni, Nick is leading the team with 102 assists against just 47 turnovers this season ... That includes 11 assists at Towson (1/14) and 10 assists at Hofstra (1/24) ... Only 16 other times has a Tribe player had 10 or more assists in a game, and only two others have accomplished the feat more than once in a single season ... Through Jan. 30, D'Antoni was fourth in the CAA with a 2.17 assist-to-turnover ratio and third with an average of 5.37 assists per game ... D'Antoni is currently second in W&M history in single-season assists per game ... The only time a Tribe player ended a season averaging more than five assists a game was when Scott Coval averaged 6.22 in the 1984-85 season.

Hess Climbing the Charts
Adam Hess' career numbers currently rank him in the top-20 in W&M history in 13 statistical categories ... His name also appears 17 times on the Tribe's single-season top-20 lists.

Jack's Back
W&M announced on Jan. 15 that forward Jack Jenkins has returned to W&M and the men's basketball team ... A two-time CAA Rookie of the Week, Jenkins was also selected to the league's all-rookie team last season, when he averaged 8.2 points and 4.3 rebounds per game ... Jenkins did not attend the College for the 2003 fall semester ... The team plans on redshirting Jenkins this season, giving him three more years of eligibility starting with next season.

High-Scoring Tribe
This season the Tribe has scored 80 or more points seven times, three more than the four times it accomplished the feat in the previous three seasons combined ... The College is currently averaging 72.9 points per game, the most for the team since the 1995-96 season, when the team averaged 74.0 ppg ... The Tribe's 99-86 win at James Madison (1/28) was its most points scored in a game since defeating Elon, 101-69, at Stanford on Dec. 22, 1999 ... It was also the most the College had scored against a CAA opponent since defeating George Mason, 116-94, at home on Feb. 27, 1995, and was the most scored on an opponent's home court since winning at UNCW, 103-85, on Feb. 20, 1993 ... Along with the 86 points scored against ODU, the 185 points is the most combined points in a two-game stretch against Division I opponents since the 1975-76 season, when the Tribe won at Richmond, 107-102, (Feb. 21) and lost to No. 3 Rutgers, 90-100 (Feb. 25).

Tribe Adds Junior College Transfer
On Jan. 9, the College announced that sophomore Adam Dutton had transferred to W&M from Cuesta Junior College in San Luis Obispo, CA ... A 6-0, 185-pound guard from Winchester, VA, Dutton will have two seasons of eligibility after sitting out the rest of this year ... Dutton graduated from Handley High School in 2001 and was a first team all-state pick in both basketball and football (wide receiver) ... He was a high school teammate of W&M's current starting quarterback, junior Lang Campbell, and starting senior linebacker Paul Carpenter ... Dutton is the Tribe's first junior college transfer in men's basketball since forward Chris Hall played for the 1994, 1995 and 1997 seasons, averaging 2.1 points and 1.6 rebounds in 56 games.

Long-Range Bomber
Junior guard Nick D'Antoni went 6-7 (.857) from beyond the three-point line at James Madison (1/28), the second-best single-game shooting percentage from outside the arc in W&M history and tied for the sixth-best in CAA history .. The six made threes is tied for the seventh-most in a game in school history.

Tony Shaver Ninth in Nation
Through Jan. 28, W&M head coach Tony Shaver had the ninth-best winning percentage in the nation among active Division I coaches, taking into account results from every level of college basketball ... Shaver currently has a record of 364-134 (.731).

1,000 Points (Again)
Adam Hess became the 27th player in W&M history to score 1,000 points in his Tribe career when he scored a layup with 17:21 left in the second half at UNCW (1/7) ... He currently is 20th in W&M history with 1,140 points while playing for the College and is the fifth W&M player to accomplish the feat while totalling three or less seasons in a Tribe uniform ... Hess scored 246 points in his freshman year at Eastern Michigan before transferring to W&M, and has 1,386 points in his college career ... Ironically, he scored the 1,000th point of his overall college career at UNCW last season ... Hess is averaging 17.3 points per game in his W&M career, eighth-best in school history ... The last person to score 1,000 points for W&M while playing less than four years is also the only person to do it in just two seasons ... Bob Sherwood scored 545 points in 1967-68 and had 506 in the 1969-70 campaign, for a total of 1,051 ... Jim Moran was the last Tribe player to get 1,000 points, ending his career in 2001 with 1,324 points, 12th in school history ... A complete list of all 27 of W&M's 1,000-point scorers is on page six of this release.

Quick Trigger
Sophomore forward Steve Sorenson quickly took advantage of his playing time at Hofstra (1/24), scoring on his first touch of the game at the 7:52 mark of the second half, just two seconds after he entered the game for the first time ... Sorenson also scored on a putback at the 7:04 mark, giving him four points in his first 50 seconds of action.

Straight Shooter
Rookie forward Corey Cofield is on pace for one of the most accurate shooting seasons in school history ... He has connected on 57.6 percent (87-151) of his field goal attempts this season ...The W&M single-season record (with a minimum of 200 attempts) was set in the 1995-96 season by Carl Parker, who shot .599 (164-274) from the floor.

Career Nights for Loehrke
Sophomore Nate Loehrke has really stepped up his play of late, setting career-highs in scoring in four of his last seven games ... The 6-10 center is averaging 7.3 points and shooting .667 (22-33) from the field in just 15.6 minutes per game in that stretch ... Against Old Dominion (1/26) he earned his first career start and scored a career-high 14 points, while tying his career-best with five rebounds ... Loehrke scored a then-career-high seven points at UNC Wilmington (1/7), then broke that mark with eight points in the next game against George Mason (1/10) ... He set a new personal standard with 10 points at Delaware (1/21) ... Loehrke has scored 52 of his 79 career points in his last seven games.

High-Scoring Hess
Five times this season, the high-scoring games of Adam Hess have ranked him in the top 20 in the nation in scoring on that particular day ... That includes three efforts that placed him in the top-five in the country, the last time being his 29 points at Delaware (1/21), tied for the second-most points in the country that day ... His average of 19.3 ppg is currently tops in the CAA.

Two-Sport Athlete?
Early in January, the Tribe spent part of its extended stay in Charlottesville, VA on the other kind of hardwood*a bowling alley ... Junior point guard Nick D'Antoni demonstrated his versatility by posting a team-high single-game score of 223 ... Also impressive was junior guard Reid Markham who, with his dominant broken right hand in a cast, was still able to roll a 109 with his left.

Road Woes
Since the start of the 1998-99 campaign, W&M has had a tough time winning on the road ... Since then the Tribe has a record of 14-62 (.184) on its opponents' home court, including a 7-41 (.146) record against CAA foes ... W&M's record since then at home is 43-28 (.606) and the Green and Gold is 3-9 (.250) in games on a neutral court ... This year, the Tribe is 1-10 on the road, with a win at James Madison on Wednesday.

Starting Lineups
This season W&M has used six different starting lineup combinations ... Senior Adam Hess and junior Nick D'Antoni are the only players to have started every game this year ... Nine of the 11 active players on the Tribe roster have started at least one game, including walk-on guard Adam Trumbower ... He is the first walk-on to start for W&M since guard Sam Steen made 13 starts as a junior in the 1996-97 campaign.

And He's Smart, Too
Not only is Adam Hess one of the top players in the conference and the state, but he also excels in the classroom ... Last season he was named a second team Academic All-American and was picked to the Academic All-District III team ... In addition, Hess earned his second selection to the CAA All-Academic Team and was named the league's first ever Men's Basketball Scholar Athlete of the Year.

More Praise for Hess
Many people that cover William and Mary and the Colonial Athletic Association know of the abilities of senior forward Adam Hess, as evidenced by his selection by the media as the league's preseason player of the year ... Now the national media is also jumping on the bandwagon, starting with a recent piece on the website collegeinsider.com, that focuses on mid-major Division I teams ... In a front page article on the site this season, Matt Drake wrote that he believes Hess may be "the BEST mid-major player in America," adding, "the Michigan native plays with poise and has an excellent shooting stroke, with seemingly unlimited range. Sure there are a lot of players with quicker feet and more pure talent, but few are as complete a player as Hess."

Tribe Wins Tourney Opener
The Tribe broke a long string of in-season tournament first round losses with the win against St. Francis in the first round of the Red Auerbach Colonial Classic ... The last time the Tribe had won the first game of such an event was Dec. 29, 1981 with a 58-48 win over Auburn at the Iron Duke Classic in Durham, NC ... Since that season, W&M had played 38 games in 19 in-season tournaments, with a record of 10-28 (.263).

Hess 30-Point Games
Last season, Adam Hess set a school record with five 30-point games in a single season ... He also had two games in which he just missed the mark, scoring 29 points ... With 31 points at Campbell on Dec. 30, 2002 and 33 points against Charleston Southern on Jan. 2, 2003, he became the first W&M player with 30 or more points in consecutive games since the 1966-67 season, when Ron Panneton had 31 against Hampden-Sydney on Jan. 11, 1967 and put up 38 at Richmond on Jan. 14, 1967.

Keeping it in the State
W&M is scheduled to play 13 regular season games this year against in-state opponents ... So far this season, W&M is 3-6 against Virginia teams ... The Tribe will play nine of the other 12 Division I schools in Virginia ... The only in-state Division I schools that W&M won't face this season are Norfolk State, Richmond and VMI.

CAA Openers
The Tribe opened its 19th season of play in the Colonial Athletic Association with a 67-66 overtime win against two-time defending league champions UNCW ... W&M was a charter member of the CAA, which officially started with the 1985-86 season ... The Tribe has a record of 8-11 in CAA openers and has won the last five times that W&M opened the conference season at home.

Season Openers
W&M's season-opening win against Liberty marked the fifth time in the last eight years that the Tribe has won its first game of the season, despite losing its two previous lidlifters ... Last season the Tribe began the year with a 79-76 home loss to Fordham on Nov. 22, 2002 ... The College's previous season-opening win was an 87-62 defeat of High Point on Nov. 17, 2000.

Home Openers
The Tribe has now won four of its last five and six of its last eight home openers, with a record of 41-18 (.695) since the 1945-46 season.

Back-to-Back Games
W&M opened the 2003-04 season with games on consecutive days in different locations (Nov. 23 at home vs. Liberty and Nov. 24 at Radford) ... It was the first time W&M played on consecutive days in different arenas since the 1976-77 season, when the Tribe won at UC Santa Barbara (78-65) on Dec. 22, 1976, before falling at eighth-ranked UCLA (59-55) on Dec. 23.

W&M Coaching Debuts
Tony Shaver became the 13th of W&M's 30 head men's basketball coaches to win his Tribe debut ... W&M's first-time coaches have done well since the start of the 1974-75 season, with five of the seven winning their first game at the College, and the other two losing by just three points each ... The last time a Tribe mentor had a winning record in his first season at W&M was Bruce Parkhill's 16-10 (.615) mark in the 1977-78 campaign.

Tribe Picked to Finish Ninth in CAA
At the league's media day in Washington, DC on October 29, W&M was picked to finish ninth in the Colonial Athletic Association ... George Mason received nine first place votes and narrowly edged out Virginia Commonwealth and UNC Wilmington as the preseason favorite to win the conference ... Last season the Tribe finished eighth in the league with a 7-11 conference record.

W&M vs. George Mason Notes
William and Mary and George Mason will meet for the 52nd time on Saturday ... The Patriots hold a slim, 26-25, advantage in the series following an 84-71 win over the Tribe in Williamsburg this season ... GMU has a record of 14-9 over W&M in Fairfax, winning the last five meetings there ... The last Tribe win in the Patriot Center was an 81-80 overtime victory on February 16, 1998

W&M vs. the Colonial Athletic Association
Saturday's game against George Mason will be the 290th meeting between William and Mary and a current member of the Colonial Athletic Association ... The Tribe is 103-186 (.356) all time against the league.