OMARI

[PointGuard]

Grambling Tigers Team and Player Stats:

They say you gotta start somewhere. Well, my start was down at the bottom of the SWAC standings and a NET Ranking very nearly at the bottom of Division 1. Pretty disappointing, but I guess there’s now nowhere to go but up.

My AD expressed confidence in me, but I’m not sure how sincere that was. If next season is a repeat of this one, his support is sure to waiver.

Malik, my younger brother, called and said I should consider going to med school to become a proctologist since they spend all their time at the bottom also. He thanked me for saving him money since he didn’t have to buy tickets to the NCAA tournament to watch my team get humiliated…he saw plenty of that when he watched some of our games on TV. Malik just got accepted to law school, so I told him payback’s hell…because when he’s gotten his degree and lost a bunch of his first cases in court, I’ll be sure to give him a quick phone call. He said he’s not worried because by then I’d be outta my coaching job and living on the street unable to afford a cell phone. I told him I might be on the street but as a lawyer he’d be in the gutter and on his way to the sewer.

Team Stats:

Record: Overall, 9-22; SWAC, 4-14, 12th place; Home, 7-8; Away, 2-13; Neutral, 0-1; NET Ranking, 360; Longest win streak, 3 games; Longest losing streak, 7 games. We were 9-12 against Quad 4 teams but 0-10 against Quad 1, 2 and 3 teams.

PPG: 71.0 (239th); Opponents PPG: 75.6 (251st); RPG: 30.6 (226th); APG: 17.1 (165th); BPG: 3.3 (294th); SPG: 7.5 (196th); FG%: 44.6 (260th); 3P%: 33.6 (255th); FT%: 72.0 (175th).

Team Prestige: 4 (no change); SWAC Prestige: 13 (increase of 6).

Player Stats:

[PointGuard]

RECRUITING

I have to admit that I didn’t have much experience with recruiting coming into this job. But I had observed my Dad’s recruiting activities and have talked with him about it a lot. That definitely helped me get through my first year of recruiting.

It took the entire year, but we had a recruiting coup this spring as we not only landed a 2nd 3-star recruit but then just today, a 4-star recruit. Those 3 high quality recruits have made our recruiting class the best in the SWAC this year. It wasn’t until late in April that we pulled in our 4-star recruit:

SG Lonnie Robertson, a 6-2 JC Sophomore from Sherwood, AR. He’s a 4-star recruit who is ranked as the 41st best recruit this year. This season he’s averaged 19.7 ppg, 6.0 rpg, 4.6 apg, 2.8 bpg, and 3.2 spg. He’s an excellent scorer with outstanding shooting ability from outside. His defense is exceptionally strong and he’s a very good rebounder, passer, and ball hawk. We courted this guy for the past 6 months and finally landed him.



And here’s our two 3-star recruits:

PF Brody Rowland, a 6-7 HS senior from Ville Platte, LA. He’s a 3-star recruit who’s ranked as the #298 recruit. This season he’s averaged 13.8 ppg, 5.0 rpg, 2.9 apg, 2.2 bpg, and 2.0 spg. He’s an excellent inside shooter and a very good shooter from outside as well. He’s very strong defensively and on the boards. We’re lucky to have landed him since he was also hot for a bunch of high quality college basketball programs.

SG Brad O’Neil, a 6-4 HS senior from St. Bernard, LA. He also is a 3-star recruit and is ranked as the 363rd top recruit. This season he’s averaged 13.8 ppg, 4.4 rpg, 5.7 apg, 2.6 bpg, and 3.1 spg. He’s a great outside shooter, likes to shoot from 3-point distance, and has excellent passing skills. He’s a hard worker. One of his parents attended Southern University and initially felt we just weren’t the right school for him. But we had some good home visits and then continued to build interest the next 5 months before he finally chose to attend Grambling.

Since two of these recruits are from within our state and the other is from neighboring Arkansas, it’s readily apparent we definitely focused our efforts locally…and it paid dividends. These 3 players should really improve our team in the upcoming years. While I was hoping to get at least one SF, I’m comfortable that we will have a few SG’s and at least one PF who can play SF for us this coming season.

[PointGuard]

Assistant Coaches

All 3 of my assistants expressed a desire to see if they could be hired elsewhere since our salaries for assistants are so low. That made sense to me and I wished them luck. But until one or more of them is hired, I’m precluded from actively doing any hiring actions. But as the hiring season progressed, I became upset with how 2nd Assistant Patrick Prince and 3rd Assistant Clarence Adams were dealing with this, so I fired both of them. My offer as 2nd Assistant to Scott Davis was accepted. Scott comes to us with good skills in recruiting. And my offer to Glen Fife as 3rd assistant was also accepted. Glen is very good at developing players. So I’m moving 1st Assistant Coach Matt Holt who was my recruiting assistant to handle scouting so that Scott will take care of recruiting and Glen will handle player development and practices. Those moves upgraded my staff without increasing my assistant coaching salaries. I think my assistants deserve better pay, but we just don’t have much of a budget.

[PointGuard]

Transferring?

Several players are considering transferring. I’ve been concerned about SG Melvin Dickens. He’s not fit in well with many of his teammates and he seems intent on moving on. I think maybe also he’s concerned that we recruited two highly rated recruits who are guards. I was planning on possibly moving Melvin to SF and am telling him that, but he’s probably already set his mind to transferring. David Jamison, who has been our primary backup at SG and also PG this season, has also said he’s seriously thinking about transferring. I’m sure his main concern is the two new SG recruits. There’s a chance I can talk him into staying, but it’s an outside chance. The main guy I’m trying to convince to stay is PF Drew Bekale. He came on strong this season, but with us recruiting a guy who could be a strong PF, he is probably concerned about losing his starting role. Drew is a guy who could move to SF this coming season…maybe that will keep him in the fold.

[PointGuard]

2nd Year as Head Coach at Grambling

Transferring Away

We took a big hit on players transferring away from us. We’re losing PF Drew Bekale, SG Melvin Dickens, and SG David Jamison…everyone I was concerned might transfer. It really came down to those 3 having difficulty fitting in solidly with their teammates. Losing two SG’s, one of whom was our starter last season, typically would be a killer, but the two recruits who are SG’s that we have coming in should be as good, or maybe better. And we have our starting PG returning plus 2 other PG’s who came off the bench a little last year and another PG who redshirted last season. But losing Drew Bekale was a real downer and decimates our interior depth.

So we go into the transfer portal needing 3 replacements…preferably two big men and a SF.

Transfer Portal Results

We spent too much money going after transfer players, but we picked up 3:

C Correy Parker—6’7” sophomore transfer from Illinois-Chicago where he averaged 15.6 ppg and 6.9 rpg and was the MVC Freshman of the Year and on the MVC All-Conference 1st Team.
C Etan Benton—7’2” junior transfer from Auburn where he averaged 5.2 ppg and 2.9 rpg.
PF Adam Scott—6’7” junior transfer from Lindenwood where he averaged 10.3 ppg and 4.8 rpg.

We were unable to land a SF so that means we will be using PF’s and/or SG’s to play the “3” for us this season.

Here’s where the guys who transferred away from us ended up:

Drew Bekale—East Tennessee State
David Jamison—Canisius
Melvin Dickens—Northeastern

I’m happy with the players who are transferring to us and feel all 3 will be on the court a lot of minutes, but think what we lost and what we gained was pretty much a wash.

[PointGuard]

Recruiting is about to kick off (late June)

We have 2 scholarships to fill and will be primarily focusing on SF’s. We don’t have much of a recruiting budget so we’ll be primarily working Louisiana and the nearby states.

Recruiting progress (mid October)

Money’s going and we’re making glacial progress. Our primary target in early August in a very talented JC small forward, but he’s more interested in some strong basketball programs than us at this point. So moving up on his radar is going to be tough. It’s rough competing with basketball programs with great facilities, prestige, prior success, and way more money than we can even dream of having. We get blown off by recruits so often, but I understand…and maybe our persistence will eventually pay off. But in mid-August I decide, even though it’s extremely early, that we have nothing to lose by offering a scholarship to the JC recruit and by doing so before the big programs make an offer, that maybe he’ll give us more consideration. There’s still a month before recruits will be accepting scholarships….we’ve had all the in-state recruits on our list visit our campus, but I’m putting a hold on paying for out-of-state recruits to visit due to our remaining budget being so small. We need to save what we have for our in-home visits in September and October.

September rolls around and our targeted JC recruit’s status remains fixed…our offer still hangs out there but we believe there are at least 3 much higher prestige programs he’s more interested in. We have a good high school SF who has us as his #1, but his grades suck so we’ll keep him on our list but wait until SAT scores come out in late January to see if he can even meet our low minimum score. We also like a kid who’s ranked lower but whose skills we like…has a couple schools on top of us, but I’m planning to visit him and if that goes well, we may offer a scholarship.

I make 4 home visits on September 5th but just 2 of those went truly positive. On our overall list, there were quite a few recruits who accepted offers from other schools so our list was shortened.

I followed up with a couple of the same recruits and a couple new ones the next week. Shortly after those visits, we got contacted by SF David Heyward, a 6’8” high school senior from Slidell, LA accepting our scholarship offer. David is ranked as the 292nd best recruit, but we think he could possibly be even better. He’s an excellent outside shooter but also shoots and scores well inside. Last season he averaged 14.0 ppg and 4.4 rpg. That leaves us with on unfilled scholarship. We still are dangling it to the high-flying JC player but his interest in us is flagging.

In late September I visit another 4 recruits. A couple went well, a couple did not. Our last home visits in early October. We switched our remaining scholarship offer from the JC recruit who we had been pursuing to a JC recruit from California. We moved up on the list of schools he’s interested in, but I think it’s a long-shot due to location. The recruit with the poor GPA still has us as the top school he’d like to attend and our home visit went well, but we’re going to see how he does on his SAT’s. The California JC recruit subsequently chose UC Irvine. So we will keep our powder dry on that scholarship and see if we can fill it this coming spring.

[PointGuard]

Fall Practice

Practices in October and early November went smoothly. We began running the Princeton offense so that we can employ it a little, although Motion will still be our primary offense mixed with High Post. Defensively we’ll continue to mainly use M-2-M and throw in some 3-2 zone. I think we have better depth this season than we did last year, but we still don’t have anyone who can be depended upon to carry our team regularly.

Our starters to begin this season are:

PG—Duane Robinson. The senior has beaten out last year’s starter, Mario Kelly.
SG—Lonnie Robertson. Coming from the JC ranks, he looks like our strongest player this year.
SF—Adam Scott. Sophomore transfer who was a starter at PF for Lindenwood last season.
PF—Aubrey Johnson. Senior who played well for us last season coming in off the bench.
C—Etan Benton. Junior transfer who was a part-time starter last year for Auburn.

The media has picked us to finish on top of the standings in the SWAC this season. That’s a big surprise to me. I believe that is overly optimistic. Moving up from the bottom of the standings last season to 1st this year is more than can be reasonably expected. We have no one starting for us this year who started for us last season and our starting 5 is likely to shift some as the season progresses. So I think we’ve got a lot of growth and development to achieve before we’re a cohesive team. My goal is for our team to improve steadily as the season progresses and finish in the top half of the SWAC standings and contend well in the conference tournament.

We’ve again opted for a pre-conference schedule with no tough opponents. But 8 of our 12 pre-conference games are on the road, so that can create problems for us.

[PointGuard]

Grambling Tigers (0-0) @ Texas A&M-Commerce Lions (0-0)

I was surprised by how large the turnout was for this game. Our guys came out firing to take an 11-3 lead at the first media break. With our offense cookin’, I told the guys to keep pressuring on D but with the refs tagging us with fouls, I cautioned against making dumb fouls. Turnovers then bit us in the butt and our lead dwindled midway through the half. We held onto a lead until there were 5 minutes left, but then the bottom fell out for us… we could hit no shots and the Lions were knocking them down. The Lions’ fans rabid support aroused the Lions and played havoc with our players’ confidence. By halftime we trailed 41-27. The Lions continued their hot shooting in the 2nd half and we never challenged. We lost 80-69. SG Lonnie Robertson—11 points; C Etan Benton—10 points.



Texas A&M-Commerce fans get into the action

[PointGuard]

Pre-Season Polls Don’t Mean Much

The first week of the season has 2 more days before it concludes and already half of the Top 10 in the Pre-Season Polls have sustained a loss. After winning their first 2 games against lesser teams in the Coaches Classic Tourney, #1 Duke got zapped in the semi-final game by Utah State 87-78 even though the Blue Devils’ freshman phenom Wesley Smith scored 27 points. In the 2nd round of the Preseason NIT Tourney, #2 Purdue fell to Auburn by a final score of 80-70. #4 ranked Ohio State got whomped 83-59 by #24 ranked Wichita State in the 2nd round of the Coaches Classic but their 5-star freshman Brian LaFlem has averaged 21.5 ppg, 9 rpg, 3 apg, 5 spg, and 4 bpg in the Buckeyes’ two games. #7 ranked Michigan continued the Big Ten’s opening week struggles by losing their opener 72-53, but at least their loss was to #5 UCONN. And finally #10 ranked North Carolina lost to #16 ranked Marquette 97-84 in the semifinals of the Preseason NIT Tournament. In addition 4 of the teams ranked 11-20 in the polls also already have a loss posted on their records (#14 St. Mary’s dropped a 102-94 game in OT to unheralded Grand Canyon; #17 ranked Texas was also skewered by the surprising Grand Canyon Antelopes 76-62; #18 ranked Gonzaga was tripped up by Georgia Tech 72-66; and #20 ranked Iowa continued the Big Ten’s demise by losing to North Texas 84-73 in a game in which the Hawkeyes’ senior center Dennis Scott scored 32 after scoring 35 in his team’s opening game of the season.

[PointGuard]

Lafayette Leopards (0-1) @ Grambling Tigers (0-1)

One of our team goals this season is to dominate at home. After 4 minutes of play we led 10-2 and Lafayette had yet to hit a FG. But with 12 minutes remaining in the first half, the Leopards had clawed their way to within 2 points of the lead. Brad O’Neil came in off the bench to scored 12 points in 6 minutes and spurred us to a 30-18 lead with 7 minutes til the half. At the half we were on top 43-29. PF Aubrey Johnson tossed in 10 points and hauled down 5 boards in the half. We started slowly in the 2nd half, but our defense allowed us to move ahead by 21 with 12:17 remaining. We held onto a big lead from thereon which allowed me to play our entire bench. We came away with an 81-61 victory. We outshot Lafayette 48% to 40%, held a 40-25 rebounding advantage and had just 9 turnovers compared to 15 by the Leopards. SG/SF Brad O’Neil scored 14 and had 3 assists and 3 steals, SG Lonnie Robertson hit for 11 points and had 5 rebounds, 3 assists, 3 steals and 3 blocks, PF Aubrey Johnson had 10 points, 6 boards, and 4 blocks, C Correy Parker scored 10 and pulled down 4 rebounds, and PF/SF Brody Rowland scored 9 points.