untgeorge

FAU made a heckuva run at WKU in the 2nd round of LY tournament (after having beaten WKU at their place in the regular season). In the tournament game vs WKU FAU was carried by Rice Monroe and Crews, who scored 64 of their team's 81 pts. That team had no visible depth; only 8 guys played and 3 of the 8 scored a total of 2 pts. Unfortunately for FAU two of those guys who carried the team on their backs are now gone. But there is still Monroe. Make no mistake, Monroe can carry a game if his guards give him a chance. He has moves, shooting touch and can bound, and as was pointed out he doesn't foul out, which speaks to his defensive ability. In that game tournament game, which is the only time I saw FAU last season, Alarcon was nearly invisible. The games he started were early season games, and his playing time diminished as the season went on. If he is to be the point for this year, he must make substantial improvement if his team is to be a contender. One would think the other guys will be given every opportunity to become the team's pg. The other seniors (Simmons and Parmer) must also raise the level of their game. The wild card may be Walters. He looks like an excellent coach and perhaps he can coax some improvement from his guards. He'll need to, he has a lot of bodies who ain't done a thing in the past.

Their coach was born in Cuba, they will have two players from Cameroon, one from Puerto Rico, and one from Serbia. That without knowing where all their new players came from. This year they will even have two players from Florida. They are certainly "international". (same for the women's team, except almost all their international players are from Europe.) Sergio is the most colorful coach in the league. Temperamental, profane, friendly, quirky, subject to fits of anger..... whatever you can say about his personality is likely true. We met him between games in the conf tournament in Denton, he remembered us when we ran into him in Murfreesboro. After their game in our Pit two seasons ago, he made a point of shaking hands with members of the Pit Crew after the game. Interesting guy who likes people and will talk to anyone at the drop of a hat. He is interesting, the question is, can he coach. His signature wins came in his first year, when his squad consisted mostly of Donnie Marsh recruits (except for Ivan Almonte and N'gio N'dye - spelling surely incorrect - whom he did recruit) and his teams which we saw in Denton and Murfreesboro were interesting but not very solid fundamentally, even Ivan got more done with his intensity and energy than with his fundamental skills. Maybe that had more to do with the talent level than the coaching, we'll see. Since I did not see them last season and since few of the players on their team at that time are still with them, I don't have much to add to CBLs interesting, well researched writeup. Sergio is an all-conference personality, but don't look for much else from this team in the coming season. As an aside, one wonders how FIUs mens team is so successful at recruiting international players. They had many international players long before Sergio came aboard. In the past most of their men's international players have come from the Carribean basin, and some like Carlos Arroyo have been very good. The story on the women's team is more obvious, their top assistant played in the women's leagues in Europe and maintained contacts after her playing career was over.

another great, well researched writeup. Fine job. ArkSt is known for its physicality; WKU for its finesse. WKU will win a lot of games on its quickness, athleticism and shooting. Plus Courtney Lee can absolutely take over a game in a way no one else in the conference, save McCalebb, is able to do. I don't watch the NBA but figure that Lee is the conference's most likely NBA success. If Pettigrew lives up to his promise, and WKU gets some help inside, watch out. Last season WKU experienced a decline in its defense; so much so that many fans began referring to coach Darrin Horn as "Arrin (No D) Horn". Much of this was the result of WKUs lack of a strong inside presence. Evans may not have enough of a big body to change that, but Pegues and/or Magli probably do, unless they disappear a la Emerson. Too bad Emerson transferred, it was fun watching Wooden and Wells and others push his 6-8 230 body around. Overall, one might expect WKUs defense to be improved, even though depending on some young talent. One wonders if Emerson's departure was his initiative or Horn's. Emerson's playing time decreased substantially from December to March. WKU may have more true point guards than the rest of the conference all together. But "true" I mean guys who distribute the ball and make plays for others; the role of McCalebb (and the now departed Rice at FAU) is to run the offense to create his own shot. The WKU coaching situation is interesting. You notice the older guy who always sits next to Horn? WKU insiders tell me he was hired specifically to help Horn (who is very young, early '30s) with in-game coaching, and for a year or so wasn't even a full-time coach. (He is now.) Gotta believe Slinker would have benefitted from this kind of arrangement. Potential means "you ain't done it yet", but this team has as much potential as anyone. Experience and skill in the backcourt, highly regarded young talent in the front court, impressive depth, and the go-to guy. The team may be a year away, but don't bet against them by conference tournament time.

Wow, interesting about Emerson. The guy never realized his potential, or what the press thought was his potential.

Good write up. ArkSt has to be the favorite to win the west, even though ULM had only one senior. There are some "buts" with ArkSt .... but there are "buts" with evey team in this conference. ArkSt plays a very physical game and Nutt is pretty good at making you play his game. In addition ArkSt is the Sun Belt's reigning trash talkers. The loss of Little will hurt their physicality and they will not be tall; big bodies, but not tall. Lack of height may not be a problem in this league, and might be compensated for with wide bodies, but they really really do need better play from their point guard to win the Belt. As to Sun Belt overall, WKU had only one senior and is better at the point, and if (big if) Daniel Emerson ever lives up to his HS hype they will be hard to beat. But despite his size Emerson is not that physical. But I guess WKU will be the subject of a later post.

The JC signed last Nov, Bell, is a point guard. If he starts there, who knows who his backup will be. A freshman? Don't think the conference will be easy. UALR returns the 3rd leading rebounder in the nation and returns a big part of the team that beat us twice last year, plus they have a coach who teaches tough tough defense. UALR is now in our division. WKU may have lost its best player but has a lot of impressive young talent returning. MT looks to be better. In our division ULL and Denver had big losses; both signed a lot of JCs, who knows how good they will be but both have a history of finding gems. UNO lost it's coach; hard to believe they could find someone better than Towe. The real question is, will we play defense? If we don't play better D, we aren't going anywhere.

jhowell.net/sc/scores/ScoresIndex.html

1954. Southern Miss, I think. Maybe Hardin-Simmons. Don't remember a thing about it.

This year every conference team makes the tournament. Next season, when there will be a larger basketball conference, only the top 8 will make the tournament.

Possibly you didn't see the last four games of the regular season, when we used a spread more often, passed 30 times a game, passed from our own 10, passed on 1st down, etc, and did so before we were behind.

the officials made no difference whatsoever. They ain't great, but they did not favor one team over the other. We should forget focusing on the officials and focus on our team's performance.

The worst thing about the SBC refs is their inconsistency. You will see many games in which they call 8 fouls in the 1st half and more than 20 in the 2nd. You will see calls in which the ref making the call is not in position to do so, and the ref in position didn't blow a whistle. You will see games in which one of the three refs will be the one blowing the whistle 2/3 or 3/4 of the time. The SBC has some good refs. One in particular, an older balding guy, is a respected ref who has been around many conferences and many NCAA tournaments for many years. He goes the extra mile in "schooling" players, telling them what he called and why and doesn't mind a little conversation with them. During the conference tournament we get refs from other conferences and the game is called entirely differently: more physicality is allowed, less tolerance for moving picks, extra steps, etc. The conf tournament officiating is more like what you see in the NCAA. Our teams should be getting the benefit of this kind of officiating all season long.

Many think these two losses are the end of the world. If you were a fan as long as I have been, you would think differently. Keith has tried to compare DDs record with the all-time school W-L record. No valid comparison of such can be made, not even if you take out the 2-year schools and other entities such as Fort Hood we played early in the 20th century. The modern era in football is considered by many writers to have begun in 1960, coincidentally a year before I graduated. If you look at the modern era you find: - We have had only one HC with a winning record, Hayden Fry - We have an overall losing record during that period - Our last conferfence championship was in 1984, the Southland, and the prevous was in 1973 - Our last consecutive conference championships were in '66 and '67 - We have had 15 years of 3 wins or less and more painful last minutes losses than I can begin to recount By comparison, these are the golden years. The best football memory I have is the Miracle in the Desert, which even though there were two conference games left told us we would win the conference. The next best is the bowl win over Cincinnati. The progress we are making is visible. Four consecutive conference championships, four consecutive bowls (more than in our previous 85 year history), two consecutive national rushing leaders. An old timers thought: is this really happening to us? A boom in new facilities, all of which (other than football stadium) will be on stream by the end of the calendar year. (Baseball might not be, but we don't control that.) Steadily increasing attendance, the most recent evidence of that being a crowd of 23,000 for a game with an opponent which has never been a big draw in the past, and which was achieved without a promotional push. Attendance had improved every year under DD until last season, when we had the low turnout Tuesday night game. We are not "there" yet. Progress was dramatic for a couple of years but will continue on a slower pace. 50 1A schools signed HS players in Texas last year, almost all from conferences which are more prominent than ours, and which have invested far more in facilities and in coaching than we ever thought of investing. Look at the histories of Boise, Marshall, and Fresno and you will see that significant progress followed significant fan and community support. We are just now developing that support. These last two losses are bad but not devasting. The Tulsa loss was worse because it was unexpected. But those things happen. Hayden lost to Okla St 7-61 and went on to a winning season. Corky lost to ArkSt 0-56 (in conference) and some consider him one of the best coaches we have had. Focus on the positives, it's easy to do. These losses were not the end of the world. Everything "The Fake Lonnie Finch" said is not only truth, it is wisdom. Focus on the positives.