The Phenom

[Wayne23]

2/4: 78-88 at Western Carolina. Down 5 after a close 1st half. Not a good night. Very poor D; they shot 57.4%.

19, 9 for Owen, 16, 6 for Celk, 15, 2, 6 for Sand. +9 RBs.

East Tenn ST lost so we still have a one game lead.

Excerpt from Post Game Presser:

Q: Coach, losses happen but psychologically losing two in a row can do some damage to a team's belief in themselves. How do you handle that?

Coach: The last thing you do is kick them when they're down. It's important to rebuild the confidence while you fix the things that went wrong. We need to play better D, and I believe we can and will do that. That's what we'll work on. We have back to back home games coming up against teams we beat on the road. We need to win these two. If we do, by then the kids will forget they were ever down.

[Wayne23]

2/8: 91-83 vs. Furman here, but it wasn't that close; we led by as many as 28. We jumped out to a big early lead. Up by 21 at the half.

Huge game for Owen, 35 and 14. 17, 5, 6 for Mert. 10 TOs.

Excerpt from Post Game Presser:

Q: Coach, after losing 2 in a row how important was it to come up with a game like this one.

Coach: It was important. I'm sure that it did a lot for our confidence. We're still only up 1 game on East Tennessee State so we need to keep winning.

[Wayne23]

2/11: 85-61 vs. NC-Greensboro here. We took an early lead again and got it to 22 at the half.

27, 9 for Celk, 15, 12 for Owen, 18, 2, 7 for Sand.

PG Reg Hayd sprained a toe. Out for about 10 days. That's not good. Sand will move to the Point, Dens will start at SG, and Mike Song will be our #3 guard.

Excerpt from Post Game Presser:

Q: Coach, it's going to be tough without Reg Hayd at the Point.

Coach: Injuries are part of the game. I'm just glad that it looks like he'll only miss a couple of games. We'll work hard at practice to adjust.

[Wayne23]

2/15: 79-76 in OT at Bellarmine. They jumped out to an early lead. We fought back but were down 4 at the half. They opened up a 12 point lead in the 2nd half. I burned a TO and made a defensive adjustment; mostly it was to cover their SG, who was killing us. We slowed him down and tied it on Gary Owen's 8 footer with 0.2 left. OT went back and forth, with 4 ties. We had it last, got it to Shawn Sand, and he hit a 21 footer off a screen at the buzzer for the win.

Sand, who was playing PG instead of his usual SG, had a terrific game, 27 points. 11, 8, 6 with 4 steals for Celk, 14, 4 for Owen.

Having Hayd out hurt us as we committed 21 TOs, 14 by our starting guards.

Back up F/C Hank Leon hurt his ankle. Out for a couple of weeks. The bench is getting short.

East Tenn ST lost so we're 2 up on them, and 4 or more up on the rest of the conference with 5 to play.

[Wayne23]

2/18: 76-70 vs. Mercer here. Back and forth for the first 10 minutes, then we went on a run. Up only 2 at the half though. Close all the way in the 2nd. We scored the last 6 points for the win but it was in doubt until the last few seconds. They were tough and just didn't give up. Their 6th man lit us up for 22, 7. We won it at the line; we went 31 times they went 12, but at least in my view we were quicker and they had to foul to stop us.

18, 12 for Owen, 18, 6 for Celk.

Hayd will be back for our next game.

3 game lead with 4 to play.

[Wayne23]

2/22: 87-67 at Wofford. We took an early lead. They fought back but we were
up by 12 at the half. Relatively easy win for a road game. We dominated inside.

28, 7 for Owen, 23, 9, 5 for Celk. +10 RBs.

Hayd played well in his 1st game back.

Ranked!!!!! For the first time in program history. We're #25. NET #26. WOOOOO!!! 22-4, 13-2.

We clinched the conference regular season title with 3 to play.

Excerpts from Post Game Presser:

Q: Coach, a lot of things have gone well for you this season and last. Word just came through that KSU is ranked #25. How about a reaction.

Coach: That's one of the many things we've been aiming for this season. We moved to a slightly tougher conference in order to help with that; beefed up the pre-conf. schedule, too. Looks like it's working.

Q: You did move up to a tougher conference. But you're dominating this one as well. Going forward, assuming you're still here next year, how will you challenge your team?

Coach: I expect to be here next year. I'll ask Tank to bump up the pre-conference schedule again, and, if possible, to move us up to a still tougher conference.

[Wayne23]

2/25: 82-67 over VMI here. We took an early lead but they hung in for awhile. Up 9 at the half. We were on control all the way but they never quite were out of it until the last 5-6 minutes.

29, 8, 3 for Celk, 24, 9 for Owen, 12, 5 for 6th man Rick Sage. +14 RBs.

Excerpts from Post Game Presser:

5 game lead with 2 to play. 23-4, 14-2, #22, NET #23.

Q: Coach, could things be going any better?

Coach: We're playing really well just about every game. But we're starting to think about the second season. Don;t get me wrong, we're focusing on each game, not looking ahead, but I am reminding them that in that second season it's one and done. We really want the conference tourney title this year.

Q: #1 in the nation in team rebounding. #5 in scoring. #10 in NET. Pretty impressive.

Coach: And we're #33 in team D. I'm a defensive oriented coach and when we got here the team D was pretty weak. I love how much it has improved. We're outscoring our opponents by 10.5; That's mostly because of our O, but D is a factor as well.

Q: You've got two huge weapons in Celk and Owen.

Coach: Yes we have. It makes it really tough to defend us. They can't really double either guy. And having Ren Mert in the mix, and Rick Sage coming off the bench makes us even stronger. And don't forget the guards, Reg Hayd and Shawn Sand move the ball well and take care of it well, and Sand gives us a strong outside threat with about 12 1/2 points per game.

Q: You're losing Hayd and #3 guard Joel Dens. Are you concerned about that?

Coach: We recruited two guards who should be able to help us right away but in retrospect we probably should have found a way to recruit a 3rd guard. I think we'll be okay though. We red shirted freshman Rod Higs and he's coming along, and Greg Morr will be a senior. He hasn't played much during his time here but maybe next year will be his year.

Q: Will Sand be your PG?

Coach: He certainly showed us he can play that spot, but I think we're stronger if we can keep him at the 2 spot. We'll have to see what happens.

[Wayne23]

3/1: 76-62 at Chattanooga. We took an early lead and stretched it to double digits quickly. Up 8 at the half. They kept it at around 10 points most of the way.

17, 9 for Owen, 17, 8 for Celk. 15, 5, 5 for Hayd, 10 for Dens. Only 10 TOs.

One more to play before the post season.

[Wayne23]

3/4: 90-84 over East Tenn ST here. Up 5 after a competitive first half. They stayed close until the end but couldn't quite catch us. This tells us that there are no guarantees in the conference tourney.

20, 9, 7 with 5 steals for Celk. 14, 5, 5 for Hayd, 21 for Owen, 12, 4, 6 for Sand. We were going inside/outside really well tonight.

Rah Celk hurt his hand. He's day to day but shouldn't miss a game.

25-4, 16-2, #20, NET #20. We win the conference by 5 over NC-Greensboro.

Owen leads us in PPG with 18.5; 2nd in RBs with 7.3. Celk gets 17.8 PPG and leads us with 7.4 RBs. Sand gets 12.2, Mert 9.4, Hayd 7.7.

#3 in the country in RBs, #6 in PPG, #10 in NET. +10.5 PPG, +6.5 RBs, -3.4 TOs.

[Wayne23]

3/6: We play #8 seed VMI, 16-14, 8-10, in the quarter finals. Beat them by 10 and 15.

3/7: 63-58 We started slowly. About 8 minutes in we woke up. Ahead by 13 at the half. Plagued by some awful calls in the 2nd half. Both Owen and Celk played a lot of minutes with 4 fouls. But we hung in. I took a T with 22 seconds left to send a message.

17 for Owen. Rick Sage had a great game from the bench, 10 and 13. We really never got much offense going tonight but fortunately, even with the foul trouble, our D was excellent; they got only 58 points and shot 36.8%. 2-18 on threes.

#4 seed Furman, 15-15, 10-8, in the semifinals. We beat them by 18 there and 8 here. We feel like we match up well against them especially inside.

If we play well and get decent officials we should be fine.

#2 seed NC-Greensboro was upset in the 1/4 finals.