Charles White has averaged 5.3 assists as well as 8.4 points a game this season for Tennessee Wesleyan, and he led the Appalachian Athletic Conference with 2.3 steals per game.
Leland Robinson
Trey SuttlesTrey Suttles. Tre Tiller.
Beyond the similarity of their first names, both are from Chattanooga and District 6-AA high school basketball teams.
And both are in their first season playing - and starting - for Tennessee Wesleyan College, which shared the Appalachian Athletic Conference regular-season championship and won a playoff for a spot in the NAIA Division II tournament in Point Lookout, Mo. The Bulldogs' first game there is at 9:30 a.m. EST Thursday.
Both Trey and Tre are listed at 6-foot-5, and both have been very instrumental in the 28-3 Bulldogs' success as program rookies. The main difference is that Suttles is a senior from Tyner, completing a run of four college programs in four years, while Tiller is a freshman from Central.
Tiller is in the starting lineup with four all-conference seniors - player of the year Leland Robinson, first-teamer Suttles and second-teamers Devante' Jenkins and Charles White - and made the AAC all-freshman team.
"Tre Tiller as a freshman is our best defender," said 12th-year coach Mike Poe. "Every game he draws the best player on the other team - he's tenacious - and on offense he just keeps getting better, daily. He passes in transition probably better than anybody else we've got.
"He's still a work in progress, but by the time he's a junior he's going to be a special, special player. He's the type of player you can build a program around."
Tiller, who's started 23 of the 31 games, has averaged 7.7 points. Robinson leads with 20.8, plus 8.1 rebounds, after fully recovering from the high ankle sprain that hobbled him all last season, and Suttles has averaged 17 points, 5.3 rebounds and 2.2 steals.
Jenkins, in his third year playing for the Bulldogs after ripping an ACL in his freshman season at Francis Marion, averages 15.5 points and a team-high 8.2 rebounds, and White has contributed 8.4 points, 5.3 assists and an AAC-best 2.3 steals a game.
Suttles was the TCCAA freshman of the year at Cleveland State his first year out of Tyner, missing out on a trip to the NJCAA Division I tournament by one point against Walters State, which included Robinson at the time. Then Suttles transferred to Walters and went to the juco nationals as a sophomore, when Robinson was redshirting at Wesleyan.
Suttles played last season for NCAA Division II member Armstrong Atlantic State in Savannah, Ga., but his two biggest fans, his mother and his grandmother, got sick and the 12-hour round trip to watch him play became even more difficult.
"This was just a better environment and closer to home," he said of Wesleyan. "Now it's a 45-minute drive (from Chattanooga), and everybody can load up.
"This is pretty much a family environment. Everybody knows everybody and you see everybody every day, it seems like," said Suttles, who said he's on track to graduate in December even with the yearly transfers.
"He's been a great addition us," Poe said of Suttles. "He's a dual threat, inside or outside. He can play the 3 (wing forward) and post those guys up, or he can take the inside guys outside with his shooting range."
Suttles scored 36 points in an 89-66 exhibition loss to Southern Conference member Wofford.
"They didn't have anybody who could guard him," said Poe, a TWC alumnus in his fifth nationals trip as the coach. The Bulldogs went in 2012 and 2013 also. They won 16 games each of the last two seasons.
TWC is one of the 3 seeds and will play its opener in Point Lookout against 6 seed Valley City State (21-10) from North Dakota, and radio stations 101.7 FM and 1450 AM in Athens will broadcast from Keeter Gymnasium. TWC's games also will be streamed online.
The 9:30 start time Thursday seems extreme, but Wesleyan had an 8:30 a.m. tipoff in the AAC tournament, and Poe pointed out that "if we're fortunate enough to win that game, we'll have more time to rest for our game the next day."
A Tennessee Wesleyan men's basketball team hasn't won a national tournament game since 1987, he reminded, "but when you've got a group of seniors who know how to play, you have a chance. And we're healthy and rested, and we've had a great, great week of practice."
Suttles, for his part, said he will play differently than in his previous national tournament with Walters State.
"When I went the first time I was a little passive, not as aggressive as I usually am," he said. "I know this time, especially it being my senior year, I'm going to be extra aggressive."
Contact Ron Bush at rbush @timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6291.