Bucknell University Athletics
Basketball's Chris McNaughton Named Bucknell's Fourth Patriot League Scholar-Athlete out of Six Winter Sports
4/22/2005 8:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
April 22, 2005
Other Bucknell winter-sport Patriot League Scholar-Athletes:
Melanie Buczko, Women's Indoor Track and Field
Adam Freeman, Men's Swimming and Diving
Rebecca Scheffter, Women's Swimming and Diving
All-Time Patriot League Scholar-Athletes
LEWISBURG, Pa. - Bucknell sophomore center Chris McNaughton (Leutershausen, Germany/Dientzenhofer Gymnasium), who helped lead the Bison to their first Patriot League Championship and then hit the game-winning shot in their historic NCAA Tournament upset of Kansas, was announced Friday as the winner of the Patriot League Scholar-Athlete of the Year Award for men's basketball. McNaughton's selection gives Bucknell four of the six winter-sport Scholar-Athletes and ups Bucknell's all-time total to 99 Scholar-Athletes in 15 years in the league.
McNaughton, who carries a 3.21 cumulative grade-point average in Bucknell's challenging electrical engineering program, is the seventh Bison basketball player to earn Patriot League Scholar-Athlete honors and the first since Dan Blankenship won it in back-to-back years in 2002 and 2003.
He joins women's track and field star Melanie Buczko, record-setting diver Adam Freeman and Patriot League champion swimmer Rebecca Scheffter as Bucknell winter Scholar-Athletes. Men's soccer's Jonathan Hemmert won the same honor in the fall.
One Scholar-Athlete from each Patriot League-sponsored sport is selected each year in a vote of the league's sports information directors. To be eligible, a student-athlete must be at least a sophomore and carry a minimum 3.20 cumulative GPA.
By team vote, McNaughton recently won the Benton A. Kribbs Award as Bucknell's team MVP. He made widespread headlines with a tremendous postseason, capping a storybook sophomore season in which he averaged 12.6 points per game, shot a league-best 59.6% from the field, and earned First Team All-Patriot League honors.
In five postseason games - three at the Patriot League Tournament and two at the NCAA Tournament - McNaughton scored 69 points while making 30 of 42 shots from the field (.714). He logged 17 points on 7 of 8 shooting in Bucknell's 61-57 victory over Holy Cross in the Patriot League championship game, which secured the team's first NCAA bid since 1989.
In Bucknell's monumental upset of third-seeded Kansas in the first round of the "Big Dance," it was McNaughton's jump hook with 10.5 seconds left that provided the winning points in a 64-63 win. He scored 14 points on 6-for-7 shooting from the field against the Jayhawks and All-America center Wayne Simien. Then in the second round of the tourney, going head-to-head with First Team All-Big 10 center Mike Wilkinson of Wisconsin, McNaughton made 10 of 14 shots and scored a career-high 23 points.
McNaughton had plenty of other big games throughout the regular season as well, most notably a 17-point showing in Bucknell's 69-66 upset of then-seventh-ranked Pittsburgh and all-star center Chris Taft on Jan. 2. McNaughton also dropped in 17 against Villanova and 21 in a key victory over MAAC champion Niagara.
The Bison finished the 2004-05 season with a 23-10 record, falling just one victory shy of the school record. They became the first team in school and Patriot League history to win an NCAA Tournament contest.
