Just as Jose Olivero is starting to get comfortable, it’ll soon be time to move again. The Lehigh senior guard grew up with a father in the Army, and he’s never lived in one place for more than three years.
“Home is where the family is,” said Olivero, who was the only member of the All-Patriot League preseason team to attend Thursday’s league media day event at ESPN SportsZone. “Lehigh is home for me right now, but as soon as it starts to feel like home, I’m about to graduate.”
Olivero has made himself comfortable in the Lehigh Valley the past three seasons. Last year he led the Mountain Hawks with 17.1 points, three rebounds and three assists per game. He’s currently the Patriot League’s active scoring leader (1,254 points), and he’s led Lehigh to the conference semifinals for three straight seasons.
“For someone who’s moved around quite a bit, he’s learned how to make new friends and how to adjust to new areas,” said Mountain Hawks coach Billy Taylor. “The transition from high school to college wasn’t as difficult for Jose in that he felt comfortable stepping outside his normal boundaries and trying to push himself to new limits.”
Those limits include an ambition to one day play in the NBA, a goal seemingly all the more attainable with the success of Bucknell’s 2006 Patriot League player of the year Charles Lee, who recently made the roster of the San Antonio Spurs.
“I just want to take it to another level,” said Olivero. “I’ve worked on my athleticism, my quickness. I want to be very quick, not just locally, but nationally, compared to different guys in different conferences.”
American senior guard Andre Ingram, also named to the league’s preseason first team, headlines an Eagles team that has six seniors and returns 99.7 percent of its scoring from last season. Ingram was the focal point of the Eagles offense last year, but he averaged the fewest points per game (12) in his three years at American.
“The fact that we struggled through and were playing our best basketball by the end of the season, that catapulted us into a spring that I can only categorize as the most productive spring workouts that I’ve ever been associated with,” said Eagles coach Jeff Jones.
Junior Travis Lay (Bullis) and sophomore Jordan Nichols (DeMatha) are also expected to be key contributors for the Eagles.
Note
Coming off a season in which Bucknell advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament with a win over Arkansas that many experts didn’t consider to be an upset, confidence was brimming Thursday at Patriot League media day. With rosters full of coachable players, zero rookie coaches and a new deal with ESPNU, the league hopes it will gain national prominence and do some bracket busting before the season is over.
Patriot preseason poll
(Last year’s record in parentheses)
» 1. Bucknell (27-5)
» 2. Holy Cross (20-12)
» 3. American (12-17)
» 4. Lehigh (19-12)
» 5. Colgate (10-19)
» 6. Lafayette (11-17)
» 7. Navy (10-18)
» 8. Army (5-22)
