IRVINE, Calif. (Oct. 19, 2022) -- UC Santa Barbara tops The Big West men’s basketball preseason poll for the second year in succession, having garnered nine of the 11 first-place votes by league head coaches.

The Gauchos accumulated 99 points, and sit ahead of Hawai’i (86 points) and 2021-22 regular-season champion and tournament runner-up Long Beach State (84), which split the remaining two first-place nods. UC Irvine (73) was slotted into the fourth position.

UC Santa Barbara is expected to be led by preseason All-Big West selections Ajay Mitchell and Andre Kelly. A sophomore guard from Ans, Belgium, Mitchell was the 2021-22 Big West Freshman of the Year after providing 11.6 points and a team-leading 3.7 assists per contest. Kelly is a 6-foot-9 forward out of Stockton who arrived in the off-season as a graduate transfer from Cal and averaged career bests of 13.4 points and a team-high 8.4 rebounds en route to an All-Pac 12 Honorable Mention selection for the Golden Bears last season.

Hawai’i will look to junior guard Noel Coleman, a native of Leopoldsburg, Belgium, who topped his team scoring chart a year ago at 14.8 points per game.

Long Beach State’s Dan Monson, the Big West Coach of the Year for the fourth time in 2021-22 and the dean of Big West men’s basketball coaches heading into his 16th campaign, returns Joel Murray (Rowlett, Texas). The senior guard led The Big West in scoring as a first-year standout for the Beach at 16.7 points per game following three stellar seasons at Division II powerhouse West Texas A&M. He also paced LBSU with 94 assists (2.8 per game).

The Anteaters and head coach Russell Turner will need to find a replacement for three-time All-Big West First Team pick Collin Welp. They do have Dawson Baker back in the fold. The junior guard put in 11.2 points per game and was an all-conference honorable mention selection last year.

UC Riverside (56 points), UC Davis (54) and reigning Big West Championship victor Cal State Fullerton (51) are all bunched together in fifth through seventh, ahead of CSU Bakersfield (32) and Cal Poly (29).

UC San Diego makes its first appearance in the poll, in 10th with 23 points. The Tritons, like the Roadrunners, are third-year members of The Big West, but as they are still in the four-year reclassification period from Division II to Division I, had been omitted from the past two installments. They will be included in this year’s conference standings, but remain ineligible for the Hercules Tires Big West Championship. CSUN rounds things out in 11th with 18 points.

UC Riverside’s Zyon Pullin is the lone repeat member of the coaches’ preseason team, joining Coleman, Kelly, Mitchell, Murray and Elijah Pepper of UC Davis.

A senior guard out of Pleasant Hill, Pullin scored a team-best 14.3 points per outing and dished out a league-leading 117 assists (4.3 per game) in 2021-22. Pepper (Selah, Wash.) was on the media’s preseason squad a year ago and went on to average a career-best 15.1 points per game, good enough for first on the Aggies and fifth in the league.

Murray was one of six members of the 2021-22 All-Big West First Team, while Coleman, Mitchell, Pepper and Pullin all made it onto the second team. It was a second straight second-team selection for Pepper, while Pullin picked up honorable mention for the 2020-21 campaign.

The 2022-23 season begins with 10 teams in action on Monday, Nov. 7. Big West play, consisting for the final time of a 10-week double round-robin schedule, opens just ahead of the new year with five contests on Thursday, Dec. 29. The Hercules Tires Big West Basketball Championships, presented by the Hawaiian Islands, return for a second edition inside The Dollar Loan Center in Henderson, Nev., March 7-11.