OMARI

[PointGuard]

Nov. 22: NJIT Highlanders—79, Grambling—77 [OT]

Another road game, but we got off to a good start, leading 16-9 with 13-1/2 minutes to go in the first half. But NJIT hit 62% of their shots to move out to a 40-37 halftime lead. We stayed tantalizingly close throughout the 2nd half, but couldn’t overtake the Highlanders. But with 2:36 remaining SF Garick Weaver sunk 2 free throws to put us ahead 69-67. NJIT fought back to go ahead 72-69 with 4 seconds remaining. On the inbounds play, Mario Kelly tossed the ball to Garick Weaver just short of midcourt and Weaver launched a prayer that was answered, tying the game at 72-72 to take us to OT. It was close all the way in OT, but we were unable to make our final basket and lost by 2 points. Five players carried us: SG Melvin Dickens—19 points; C Rob Adkins—15 points and 12 rebounds; SF Garick Weaver—15 points and 8 rebounds; PF Drew Bekale—12 points and 13 rebounds; SF Brandon Harper—12 points. Positives: Rebounding (+6); Bekale and Adkins interior play (combined 27 points and 25 boards). Negatives: FT shooting (15 of 31 and Kelly going 0 for 8 at the line); Defense (particularly in first half). [1-2]

[PointGuard]

Nov. 25: Bellarmine Knights—79, Grambling Tigers--76

This is our 3rd consecutive away game before getting some home games and it’s against a team that is unbeaten (4-0) this season with 2 interior starters who have combined to average 34 ppg…one of those is David Bekale, a cousin of our Drew Bekale. The Knights play a 2-3 zone which we’ve practiced for but I’m not sure how well our players will do against it. It’s game time so here we go: Bellarmine’s two big men scored their first 9 points but we tied them at that point only to have Rob Adkins pick up his 2nd foul at the 14:44 point of the first half. We played really well the rest of the half and went to the locker room up 41-36. The battle of the Bekale’s in the first half ended in a draw as both Drew and David scored 8 points. We opened an 11 point lead only to have the Knights strike back and tie the game at 58-58 with 11-1/2 minutes remaining. Our guys put up a helluva good fight, but we came out on the short end of a 79-76 score. Our 3 losses have been by a combined total of 11 points. Top scorers for us: SG Melvin Dickens—17 (plus 4 rebounds, 3 assists, 3 steals and a block); PF Drew Bekale—16 (and 6 rebounds and 4 blocks); SF Brandon Harper—13; SG David Jamison—10. For Bellarmine, David Bekale scored 15 but Adrian Heath dumped in 19 points. I was impressed by our scrappiness the entire game, but we gave up too many open shots to the Knights in the 2nd half resulting in them hitting 66% of their 2nd half shots. Having PF Aubrey Johnson still sidelined by an injury is giving us a really short bench and our guys were running on fumes tonight. [1-3]

[PointGuard]

Team assessment thus far

We’ve played well in the first half of our games, but our 2nd halves have been disastrous in 3 of our 4 games. I think our lack of depth is killing us. Our guys are just running out of steam in the 2nd half. That’s mainly affected our defense which has been adequate in the first 20 minutes, but porous in the final 20 minutes. We’re continuing to work on improving our conditioning. We’re still a week or two out of getting Aubrey Johnson back off the injured list, but once he’s returned that should help a lot.

But even though we’ve lost 3 of our 4 games, the losses have all come on the road and been by y, 2 and 3 points and one of those was in OT. On the plus side, we have 3 guys (Drew Bekale, Rob Adkins, and Melvin Dickens) averaging in double figures and our team’s rebounding, while not impressive, has been better than expected. So while we’re not a great shooting team, our rebounding strength has kept us in games. We’ve also got 3 straight home games coming up so that could help us right the boat.

Defensively, I’m rethinking my initial plan of sticking just with m-2-m. As our players stamina decreases, our opponents are getting open for better shots. So we’re going to begin practicing a zone D. We have at least some players who have a little familiarity with a 3-2 zone so that’s what we’ll use. It’s going to take a while, but as soon as our squad begins to be ready to implement it, we’ll try it occasionally in games, simply as a way of throwing off our opponents and helping out players more quickly build in-game familiarity with using that D in games. Yeah, we’ll probably get burned when we first begin using it, but as the team becomes more competent employing the 3-2 zone, we’ll use it a little more. Man D will still be our primary defense, though.

[PointGuard]

Nov. 29: Grambling Tigers—83, Maine Black Bears--78

The lead shifted back and forth in the first half and there was never more than a 5 point advantage for either team. But we came out of the half ahead 40-37. We didn’t overwhelm Maine in the 2nd half, but never let them take the lead. We hit 57% of our shots from the field in the game. Offensively we were led by C Rob Adkins’ 20 points and SG Melvin Dickens 14 points. And we got good support from our other 3 starters (Bekale and Weaver with 9 points apiece and Kelly with 8) and our 3 primary reserves (Jamison’s 8 points, Harper with 7 points, and Erwin who added 6). Dickens also had 7 rebounds, 8 assists, and 5 steals. [2-3]

[PointGuard]

Dec. 2: Grambling Tigers—83, Cal State Bakersfield Roadrunners—68

Our 2nd straight game scoring 83 points. I could get used to that. Another close first half with neither team ahead by more than 4 points. We held a slim 37-36 halftime advantage. But we steadily pulled away from the Roadrunners throughout the 2nd half, primarily due to our being +5 in rebounding and making 7 less turnovers than CSU Bakersfield. PG Mario Kelly and SF Brandon Harper both scored 13 points and 8 of our players scored between 6 and 9 points…so a real team effort and our most dominant game thus far this season. [3-3]

[PointGuard]

Winter Recruiting

Our two offers to recruits remain dangling as we try to tantalize them to accept, but both guys seem to be holding out for offers from more prestigious programs. So we’re contacting a pretty big list of high quality recruits to try to get them interested in checking us out and then build excitement about Grambling and our basketball program. We’re limiting our expenditures to ensure we’ll have money to actively recruit this spring to fill our two remaining scholarships. Many people would say we’re overshooting by going after very strong recruits. On one hand they’re correct since getting that quality of recruit to show ANY interest in us is extremely difficult and then, if we do, getting toward the top of their preferred schools is even tougher. But on the other hand we need some players who can jumpstart the improvement of basketball at Grambling so it’s worth the risk of failing. If we end up striking out, we’ll go after transfer players in May.

[PointGuard]

Dec. 6: Grambling Tigers—75, North Carolina A&T Aggies—57

3 home games, 3 wins and PF Aubrey Johnson was back from injury to play in this game. Can’t ask for more than that. We led for the final 38 minutes of this game. By halftime we were up 43-32 and led by as much as 24 in the 2nd half. We knocked down 51% of our FGA’s (but only 24% of our 3’s) and controlled the boards and played good D. PG Melvin Dickens had a big game with 21 points, 3 rebounds, 4 assists, and 3 steals. PF Drew Bekale had 15 points, 7 boards, 4 assists, and 2 steals. [4-3]

[CoachPrm15]

Starting to build a little momentum, the Fedora would be proud with this winning streak.

[PointGuard]

Dec. 9: Southern Indiana Screaming Eagles—68, Grambling Tigers--66

We went back on the road, but I hoped our 3 game win streak had created confidence in our players so they'd maintain their momentum. But we sustained yet another really close loss. So now 4 losses by a combined total of 13 points. This game was close the entire way with 11 lead changes. And the team stats were as close as the final score. We had chances to take this to OT, but missed shots on our final two possessions. And while the entire team played pretty well and we got good production from our bench, only two of our starters (SG Melvin Dickens with 15 points and PF Drew Bekale with 12 points) had good offensive games. I’d say the biggest negative for us, though, was our shooting from beyond the arc where we connected on just 3 of 17 opportunities. [4-4]

[PointGuard]

Dec. 13: SIU Edwardsville Cougars—83, Grambling Tigers--80

We got edged out yet again. While we never led in this game, we were never far behind either. We got so close at the end but just couldn’t come up with a way to get us over the hump. We outshot and out-rebounded the Cougars but made 5 more turnovers and were outscored at the foul line by 8 points. The refs put our starting guards (Kelly & Dickens) into foul trouble with Kelly fouling out. I'm pretty sure I was close to getting T'd. My assistants were tugging me back. It’s disappointing to keep losing these tight games…it always leaves me questioning 2 or 3 moves I made in the game. Topping our scoring were: SF Garick Weaver who had 17 points plus 5 rebounds; C Rob Adkins with 15 points and 8 rebounds; and SG Melvin Dickens who scored 13 points and had 5 boards, 2 assists, and 2 steals. [4-5]