Kyle Poerschke — holding a UTD record with 43 points scored in one game — was awarded the U.S. Basketball Writers Association Division III National Player of the Week on Jan. 18.
“You know, outside of this interview, [the Men’s Basketball Team] doesn’t get a lot of recognition,” Poerschke said. “We’re just doing it for each other and [our] love for basketball and I’m thankful that I’ve gotten to do that in my five years in college. I get to do something that I feel like is really meaningful and get it to do with it with guys that I care about. That’s really all you’re doing it for at the [Division III] level, because it’s not like we’re getting the benefits of scholarship money or anything like that. We’re just doing it because it’s doing something special together and that’s what makes DIII special. It’s about the guys, about the coaches and it’s about doing things together and nothing else.”
Poerschke made his claim to national recognition on Jan. 14 with a winning game against the Christian Polytechnic University’s Yellowjackets 89-81, where he proceeded to dominate eight personal records and surpass the highest points scored in all of UTD history. In celebration of his record-breaking performance, Poerschke was selected as the American Southwest Conference men’s basketball player of the week for the second time in his career and a second spot in the d3hoops.com team of the week, which is a national recognition amongst Division III players.
Poerschke’s incredible 43 points against the Yellowjackets beat the tied program record of 40 points, between Martin Salinas in 2005 and Raphael Farley in 2015. Poerschke shot a personal record of 68.2% accuracy for field goals, 70% accuracy for three and 85.7% accuracy for free throws in his longest gameplay of 37 minutes. On top of that, in the Jan. 14 game, Poerschke managed to beat his personal career record for field goals made, field goals attempted, three pointers made, three pointers attempted, free throws made and free throws attempted.
“Luckily my shots were falling through,” Poerschke said, “I was able to make a bunch of shots, and I give credit to my teammates. They just put me in the position where it’s easy to do what I do. Being [able to] put the ball in the basket is the easy thing to do. A lot of my teammates do a lot of the dirty work and the hard stuff and don’t get as much credit as you know, people who pay attention to points.”
Despite being one of the newest members of the team, Poerschke has been an exceptional team player and leader for the past 17 games.
Poerschke began his career in the Division III program at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, where he played for the Pirates. During his time as a Pirate, Poerschke earned the All-Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference First Team honors in 2021 and 2022, was nominated as a three-time SCAC Player of the Week and earned National Association of Basketball Coaches Honors Court in 2019. Already a highly decorated basketball player, he graduated Southwestern University with a bachelors in Business Analytics before coming to UTD.
“I wanted to use one more year to play another year of basketball and see what I’m capable of, and so I chose to come to UTD, a place that has a pretty historic, storied basketball program and felt like it was something I wanted to be a part of.”
Poerschke recently transferred from a business analytics program to a marketing major during his first year of graduate school at UTD.
“I love the idea of working on building a brand or growing a current brand. I think that’s kind of where my passion lies,” Poerschke said. “Me and my brother started a golf apparel brand that we’ve been running for the past two years, and that’s been an awesome experience just to get to learn and figure out how to do things. You know we’ve designed all of our products and done all of the promotion for our products … and getting to start that with my brother has been something that’s been special.”