Neumann University Men's Basketball Rolling Once Again

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The Neumann University men's basketball team enjoyed the best season season in program history during the 2016-17 campaign, going 25-3, winning the Colonial States Athletic Conference title and playing in the Division III NCAA Tournament.

Three players who were tops on last season's team in scoring and rebounding graduated, leaving a lot of questions for the Knights coming into the 2017-18 campaign. Those questions have been answered quite positively so far.

After an 85-76 road win over Immaculata on Wednesday night, the Knights sit at 14-4 this season (9-3 in the CSAC).

"I think when you talk about coming from last year's team where it was a very special group and losing three of those key components, how do you replace that was the question," Neumann head coach Jim Rullo said during a Thursday morning visit to the KYW Newsradio studios. "Fortunately for us, we had players like [seniors] Billy Cassidy and Tyaire Hudson coming back as guards that I thought could solidify some presence. But we're pleasantly pleased with the progress of our forwards and we're obviously very pleased with being 14-4 right now and I think we're in a good spot."

Hudson leads the Knights in scoring at 17.1 points per game and he is tops with 68 assists and 38 steals. Cassidy is averaging 13.3 points and shooting 43% from three. The Knights are also getting great work from freshman forward Aaron Johnson-Chavis who averages 14 points and a team high 9.3 rebounds a game and sophomore guard Raquan Brown-Johnson who scores 14.5 points a night while pulling down 5.7 rebounds.

The Knights got off to a 3-0 start and sat at 4-2 when they picked up an early December non-conference road win over the University of Scranton. Rullo points to that game s a key moment for his team this season.

"I thought going up there and getting a nice road win, you started to see that there was potential and there was opportunity," he says. "If we bought into a few things and we kind of fine-tuned a few things that when we did get into conference play, we could at least be in the mix. That's what we were hoping for, just to kind of be in the mix when the playoffs rolled around."

Right now the Knights are third in the CSAC behind talented teams in Gwynedd-Mercy (10-1 league record) and Cabrini (10-2) with a good Rosemont squad (8-4) just a game behind them. So there is still a lot of work to do with an eye toward the conference tournament. Rullo talks about the focus for his team down the stretch.

"I think our attention to detail on the defensive end of the floor," he says. "Just as important is making sure, sort of like the Ivy League, making sure than our guys understand that the seven games remaining right now are all playoff games. Because we're all jockeying for position to finish with a higher seed because, potential bye, potential home court advantage is gigantic. Because some of the places we play on the road are very difficult and it's very beneficial if you can treat each of the games the remaining part of the season just like that, as a playoff game, to make sure that we're fine tuned and ready to go."

Home court advantage would indeed be big for the Knights who are 10-0 this season at the Mirenda Center in Aston.

The Knights will play their next game at home, hosting Keystone on Saturday.