{"id":240749,"date":"2025-10-21T10:02:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T10:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/240749\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T10:02:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T10:02:08","slug":"preseason-honors-for-2025-26-texas-state-basketball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/240749\/","title":{"rendered":"Preseason honors for 2025-26 Texas State basketball"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ahead of the start of the 2025-26 season, Texas State men&#8217;s basketball had two players selected to the preseason <a href=\"https:\/\/sunbeltsports.org\/news\/2025\/10\/20\/james-madison-tabbed-2025-26-sun-belt-mens-basketball-favorite-odus-davis-named-preseason-player-of-the-year.aspx\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">All-Sun Belt teams<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Senior guard <a href=\"https:\/\/txst.com\/sports\/mens-basketball\/roster\/mark-drone\/12236\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">Mark Drone<\/a> was selected to the second team. He is entering his second year with\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statesman.com\/sports\/college\/football\/article\/lakeyleon-graves-texas-state-football-gj-kinne-21044694.php\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Texas State<\/a> after transferring from Southwest Mississippi Community College. In a 2024-2025 season shortened by injury, Drone averaged 11.5 points, 2.8 assists and 1.5 steals in 10 games. His best performance came against Southern Miss, when he exploded for 30 points on 12-of-20 shooting.<\/p>\n<p>Bobcats junior guard <a href=\"https:\/\/txst.com\/sports\/mens-basketball\/roster\/kaden-gumbs\/12238\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kaden Gumbs<\/a>, meanwhile, earned a third team spot. The San Marcos product increased his production and efficiency last season, recording 11.0 points, 4.0 assists and 1.5 steals per game on a 45.8 field goal percentage. He got to the charity stripe 76 times and knocked down 86.8% of his free throws.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In the preseason coaches&#8217; poll, the Bobcats finished eighth out of 14 teams. They&#8217;ve never won the Sun Belt, but with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statesman.com\/story\/sports\/college\/2025\/06\/30\/texas-state-approves-5-million-buyout-to-leave-sun-belt-join-pac-12\/84416493007\/\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the move to the Pac-12<\/a> on the way, things are shifting. RJ Livingston, a three-star guard out of Isidore Newman, committed last Friday to Texas State. In addition, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statesman.com\/story\/sports\/college\/2022\/07\/01\/texas-state-reaches-five-year-coaching-extension-terrance-johnson\/7791509001\/\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">coach Terrence Johnson<\/a> landed the top two basketball recruits in program history with the signings of freshman forwards <a href=\"https:\/\/247sports.com\/player\/dj-hall-46142778\/\" data-link=\"native\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">DJ Hall<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/247sports.com\/player\/robert-fields-46152182\/\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Robert Fields<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Hall, a 6-foot-6 forward from Plano, was a three-star prospect ranked\u00a0in the top 20 statewide for his class, per 247Sports. Fields is a 6-8 forward out of\u00a0Owings Mills, Md. He was a heavily recruited midmajor recruit ranked in the top 10 for his state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ahead of the start of the 2025-26 season, Texas State men&#8217;s basketball had two players selected to the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,4044,45506,398,400,6172,401,99,17927,74209],"class_list":["post-240749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-college-basketball","tag-men-s-college-basketball","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaa-division-i","tag-ncaabasketball","tag-sports","tag-texas-state-university","tag-texas-state-bobcats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}