Head Coach Bob Rukavina's Pitt-Johnstown men's basketball team, led by First-Team All-PSAC West and two-time PSAC West Defensive Player of the Year John Paul Kromka, received a pair of first place votes and has been picked to finish third in the PSAC Western Division when the 2021-22 conference Preseason Coaches Poll was released on Thursday.

Indiana (PA) and Shippensburg have been chosen by the coaches to win the Western Division and Eastern Division, respectively.

The Mountain Cats had an impressive 2019-20 season with a record of 22-9 overall and 15-7 mark in league games, finishing third in the PSAC West.  Kromka led the team in points per game averaging 15.5 per contest and narrowly missed averaging a double-double per contest, pulling down 8.3 boards per game. In all, Pitt-Johnstown returns six of its top seven players.  Along with Kromka, the Mountain Cats welcome back point guard Fred Mulbah, who led the PSAC in assists (206) and assists per game (6.7) in 2019-20, and forward Caiden Landis, who averaged 10.6 points and 5.0 rebounds per game.  In addition, a handful of sharp-shooting guards in Drew Magestro (9.5 ppg), Joe Batt (9.0 ppg), and Jared Jakubick (4.5 ppg.) also return to the Mountain Cats' lineup.

IUP, which received seven of the nine first-place votes, is the defending PSAC Champions and open this season at No. 18 in the NABC National Preseason Poll. It's the 13th straight time they begin the season in the Top-25, while Shippensburg also earned seven first-place votes in the Eastern Division preseason poll.  The Raiders finished with a 24-7 overall mark and an 18-4 league mark finishing first in the East in 2019-20.