SOUTH EASTON, Mass. – Junior Eric Anderson (Newark, N.J./Newark Tech) has been named the Northeast-10 Defensive Player of the Year for the second consecutive season, as announced this morning by the NE-10 and voted upon by the conference's 15 head coaches. Anderson is also the first-ever First Team All-Northeast-10 selection for the University of New Haven men's basketball team.
 
Complete Release at Northeast10.org
 
Senior Jeffery Adkins (Piscataway, N.J./Piscataway) garnered Second Team All-Northeast-10 recognition, while his classmate Justin Exum (Brooklyn, N.Y./Xaverian) was an All-NE-10 Honorable Mention.
 
Anderson ranks second in the Northeast-10 and seventh in all of Division II with 11.7 rebounds per game and is also the conference's second-most prolific shot-blocker with 2.46 rejections per contest. The junior anchors a New Haven defense that ranks fifth nationally with a conference-best 62.3 points allowed per game. He is only the second player to win back-to-back Northeast-10 Defensive Player of the Year honors since the award's inception in the 1992-93 campaign. Assumption's Shahar Golan was a three-time winner in 2001-02, 2002-03 and 2003-04.
 
Also the first-ever First Team All-Northeast-10 honoree in program history, Anderson leads the Chargers with 15.8 points per game while shooting 50.5 percent from the floor. He is among the national leaders with 17 double-doubles this season and has scored 20 or more points in five occasions. Anderson sank the game-winning free throws as a part of a career-high 29 points effort in the Jan. 22 win over Bentley and rejected the potential game-tying layup in the waning seconds of a two-point win at Southern New Hampshire on Jan. 28. He enters the postseason with a streak of three consecutive double-doubles, averaging 17.3 points and 14.0 rebounds per outing during that stretch.
 
Anderson was an NE-10 All-Rookie Team pick in 2011-12 and the NE-10 Defensive Player of the Year and a Second Team honoree in 2012-13.
 
Adkins follows up a 2012-13 campaign in which he was a Third Team All-NE-10 pick with a Second Team nod this winter. The Chargers' senior point guard is averaging 15.8 points per game, shooting 50.7 percent from the field and 81.1 percent from the free throw line. Adkins also distributes a team-leading 4.5 assists per contest and chips in on the glass with 3.2 boards per game. He converted the game-winning layup with 1.1 seconds remaining at Le Moyne as a part of season in which he has netted 20 or more points in eight contests, including a career-high 27 points at Southern Connecticut State on Dec. 22.
 
Exum, who was an All-Rookie Team pick in 2010-11 and a Second Team All-NE-10 and NABC Second Team All-District selection last season, adds to his résumé with an All-Northeast-10 Honorable Mention in his senior campaign. One of the all-time leading scorers and the most-prolific three-point shooter in program history, Exum averages 15.3 points and 4.0 rebounds per game for the Chargers this winter. He has knocked down 52 three-pointers in 23 games and shoots a team-best 86.8 percent from the charity stripe. Exum scored a season-high 30 points in the win at Pace on Nov. 23 and averages 18.0 points per game over the team's last six outings.
 
New Haven begins the postseason on Sunday, March 2 with a visit from Saint Michael's in a Northeast-10 Championship Quarterfinal clash. The Chargers finished out the regular season on a four-game winning streak to round out a 19-7 record and claimed the No. 2 seed in the NE-10 Southwest Division with a 14-6 conference mark.