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| Mike Leimeister, 1st team All-HCAC | Marcus Bixler, H.M. All-HCAC |
A pair of Bluffton College men’s basketball players have received All-Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference honors, according to a vote of the league’s coaches released Thursday, March 6. Senior forward/center Mike Leimeister (Collins, Ohio/Edison H.S.) has been named first-team All-HCAC for the second year in a row, and senior point guard Marcus Bixler (Arcanum/Franklin-Monroe H.S.) has been named honorable mention to earn his first all-league award.
Leimeister led the HCAC in scoring this season with 21.7 points per game and ranked second in rebounding with 8.4 rebounds per game. Also a first-team All-HCAC selection last season when he ranked second in the league in scoring (17.3 ppg), Leimeister joined the Bluffton 1,000 point club on Feb. 22 and finished his career with 1,015 points and 384 rebounds. As a senior he scored 563 points, which is the fifth-highest single-season scoring total in Bluffton history, and he scored 30 or more points in a game 11 times in his career, which ranks third on the career 30+ point games list. He holds BC single-game records for field goal percentage (.933, 14-for-15 vs. Defiance, 2/13/03) and free throws made (20, vs. Defiance, 1/22/03, 20-for-22), and his career field goal percentage of .555 ranks fifth all-time at Bluffton.
Bixler ranked among the best guards in the HCAC this season as he finished the season ranked 25th in scoring (9.7 ppg), second in assists (104, 4.2 apg), third in free throw percentage (.825), third in steals (43, 1.7 spg), sixth in 3-point shooting percentage (.397) and fifth in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.37). He holds the Bluffton record for assists in a game with 13 vs. Concordia as a junior and ended his career with 246 assists, which ranks 11th all-time, while his 99 career steals rank seventh all-time.
Leimeister and Bixler were named co-captains in the pre-season for head coach Guy Neal. Since Bluffton joined the HCAC in 1998, Leimeister is the second player to earn back-to-back first-team honors—the first was Jeremy Roberts (1998-99 and 1999-00).
