Tigers face tough early road trips

By BOB FORREST

ADA — With only two starters back from last years 10-16 club, East Central University men’s coach Terry Shannon is facing what could be his biggest rebuilding job since he took over the program midway through the 2002-2003 season. But none of the challenges that will confront the current crop of Tigers and their coach later in the 2007-2008 campaign figure to be as tough as the team’s three exhibition games this week.

The ECU men and women will travel to Stillwater Tuesday to meet Oklahoma State in a twinbill (women’s game at 5:30 p.m.), then the men will be in Norman Thursday and Friday to face more Division I competition in the Coaches vs. Cancer College Hoop Classic at the Lloyd Noble Center. ECU will meet the University of Denver Thursday and, with a win, will move on to a Friday showdown with the winner of a game later Thursday between OU and the University of San Francisco.

“One advantage of the exhibition games is we get to play good competition, and they also help generate revenue for our program,” Shannon said of his team’s three games against Division I competition this week. “Our kids are excited, and I’m excited. Those are big venues to play in.

“We’re going there realizing it’s early in the year, and we have to make sure we’re progressing in the things we want to get accomplished,” he added. “Then we want to come back and work and continue to improve.”

Shannon’s club should be a work in progress throughout the coming season, with several talented newcomers joining senior point guard Terrell “T-Lo” Carpenter and 6-9 junior center Ian Adams. Carpenter averaged 13.3 points and 4.6 rebounds as a junior, and he also ranked fifth in the Lone Star Conference in assist-to-turnover ratio last season.

“He’s one of those players you don’t worry about because he makes the right pass, shoots the correct shots and rebounds,” Shannon said of Carpenter, who will be expected to pick up a lot of the backcourt scoring ECU will be missing after the graduation of the high-scoring tandem of James Nave and Jason Thomas. “He’s what you want in a point guard.

“You know what you’re going to get with T-Lo,” he added. “He can play at any tempo.”

Adams averaged 7.7 points and 4.4 rebounds in 2006-07, and as a freshman he set a school record for blocks in a game with 10. A native of Grenada, Adams is the only returnee from last year’s front court rotation (with fellow Grenadan Lyndon Daniel, who transferred, and Brandon Bingle, who graduated) — a trio that helped ECU rank among the national leaders in Division II in rebounding and rebounding margin all season.

“He continually gets better, both mentally and physically,” Shannon said of Adams, the LSC Freshman of the year in 2005-2006. “He’s still learning and eager to learn. He’s got great work ethic. This is the time for him to step forward.”

With the departure of Bingle (second in rebounding in the LSC last year), Daniel, Thomas and Nave, Shannon lost more than 44 points and 25 rebounds per game, and the veteran coach said he will spend the early part of his upcoming campaign — beginning with this week’s demanding tripleheader — searching for players who can replace those losses.

“The new guys are still learning and they still don’t understand how good our league is, but getting to �� play these teams early will give them a dose of reality,” Shannon noted. “The pressure these teams will put against us will make us better with the basketball.

“We feel like we have a number of guys now who can make shots and score,” he said. “We might not have guys who can score 20 points a game, but we have a lot of guys who can score nine or 10 points a game. The rebounding we lost is a concern. Rebounding is an attitude, and we need the mentality that we’re going to rebound the basketball.”

Thomas, a two-time all-LSC selection, averaged 21 points per game last season, and Nave averaged almost 14 points per game as a senior and was ECU’s most consistent scorer down the stretch. Shannon said finding replacement — guards who can complement Carpenter, his one proven playmaker — is a major priority early in the season, and that process begins this week.

“We’ll have a better idea after this first week of playing,” said Shannon, whose club opens the regular season Nov. 20 at Dallas Baptist. “I like this group of guards. They’re athletic, they have good size, and they all show signs of being able to score.

“And we have good numbers to choose from — that’s what exciting,” he added. “Nobody has really separated themselves from the pack, but they’re all working hard and paying attention, and they all have good attitudes.”

Sophomore Cody Shead and junior Tyler Thetford, who both saw action last season, are Shannon’s only backcourt performers with Division II experience, but he has a talented group of newcomers at the guard position — several of whom are expected to contribute right away.

Transfers Tariq Naqqash (6-1) and James Reynolds (6-2) and the freshman tandem of 6-2 guard Nathan Fuqua and 6-4 guard/forward Lougwin Spann (both from Chicago) are all candidates to replace Nave and Thomas in the starting lineup.

The most high-profile newcomer on the ECU roster is Justin Wilkerson, a transfer from Texas Tech who was a blue chip recruit out of high school and whose brother, Jason, played for longtime ECU coach Wayne Cobb from 1999-2004 and ranks fourth on the school’s all-time scoring list.

“He needs to take up some of the slack, but we still need to see him play,” Shannon said of the 6-9 Wilkerson. “He hasn’t played in two years. We know he has the ability to do some things, but we’re still waiting to see.”

Shannon has another Division I transfer in 6-9 senior Dominique Scales, who sat out last season after transferring from the University of Maine. Juco transfers John Riley, Michael Dyson and Chris Cooper are expected to provide some depth along the front line, and the team has some local flavor with former area stars Cody Hibbard and Aaron Robinson of Ada and John Qualls from Stratford on the roster.

Depth was a concern for Shannon for most of the last season, after a several of his most highly regarded recruits transferred in midseason. As a result, the Tigers wilted down the stretch, losing 12 of their last 15 games after an early-season six-game winning streak had them at 7-4.

Wilkerson and Scales were sitting out last year, but they practiced with us so they know what to expect,” Shannon said. “The new guys need to get where they can help us as quick as possible, because we lost quite a bit of punch from our lineup. We don’t have a lot of experience at the Division II level, but we’re athletic, and we feel like we have better numbers as far as the guys who can help us.”

Shannon said he expects to compensate for his overall lack of experience and proven scoring with defense and rebounding — the cornerstones of ECU’s early-season success a year ago.

“The only way to stay in ballgames consistently is to defend, rebound and limit your turnovers,” he explained. “If you can do that, you have a chance to be in ballgames. Then you need players who can make plays. Last year our depth wasn’t real good and our shot selections wasn’t good at time, and that put us in bad spots.

“We basically have a whole new team,” he said. “That’s exciting, but at the same time, I’m a little bit nervous. They’re eager to learn and eager to play, so we’ll just see. We’re not anywhere close to where we need to be, but you don’t want to be this early in the season.”