By
Al Myatt
©2013 Bonesville.net
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As East Carolina is poised to move into the American
Athletic Conference with a new UNDAUNTED attitude and its
recently-released logos, it's a good time to examine how personnel
shortages in basketball this season may help the Pirates become better
prepared for the jump to the AAC for 2014-15.
When ECU starts competing with Cincinnati, Connecticut,
Memphis and the rest, it will need every advantage it can muster.
To be sure the transfer of Robert Sampson to Georgia Tech
and the exit of Ty Armstrong plus injuries to Marshall Guilmette and
Erin Straughn have had an impact. One doesn't need to gaze beyond an 0-5
start in Conference USA to see that.
Sampson averaged 9.1 points and 9.2 rebounds in 29.9
minutes last season for a 23-12 team that
won the CollegeInsider.com Tournament.
Sampson blocked a team high 60 shots in 2012-13.
Armstrong averaged 9.3 points and 4.5 rebounds in 20.3
minutes.
Straughn never made it back from a stress fracture that
sidelined him last season. A strong defender, Straughn had a 4.9 scoring
average and also gathered 4.6 rebounds while getting 22.1 minutes per
contest in his first three seasons with the Pirates.
A knee injury sidelined Guilmette five games into his
sophomore season but he was scoring at a 7.0 clip with 4.4 rebounds per
game when he went out.
ECU has struggled to finish since entering C-USA play
with an 11-3 record.
The Pirates have been tied or had the lead at halftime in
all five league matchups but have not been able to go the distance and
get a win.
Despite Jeff Lebo's best efforts to lighten the load for
a short rotation — both in terms of numbers and size — such as playing
more zone, getting to the free throw line and readily granting the green
light beyond the 3-point line, the best ECU has been able to do in C-USA
is a series of competitive losses.
It has been a frustrating set of circumstances but one
that might actually pay dividends in the long run.
With the Pirates on the verge of moving into a league
that is rated about seven points higher on the scale compiled by Jeff
Sagarin of USA Today, the minutes that Armstrong, Sampson and Straughn
would have played this season as seniors would have no carryover value
when ECU casts off on its maiden voyage through the AAC.
The time that freshman Brandan Stith and sophomore
Michael Zangari are getting will serve them well as the channel gets
deeper. Hopefully, Guilmette will be back with a renewed confidence from
his strong start this season.
"The best way to learn and develop and get better is
having a chance to play," Lebo said.
Three transfers have the potential for impact in the
manner that players such as Maurice Kemp, Miguel Paul and Akeem Richmond
have brought to the Pirates from other programs.
Former Florida State sharpshooter Terry Whisnant should
provide the kind of shooting range that Richmond has given ECU. Whisnant
dropped 35.6 percent from behind the arc as a sophomore for the
Seminoles.
Keith Armstrong, a 6-feet, 7-inch, 240-pound transfer
from Robert Morris, and Winston-Salem State transfer Michel-Ofik Nzege,
also 6-7, will help the shortage of frontcourt bodies. The Pirates are
also bringing in 6-9, 250-pound Kana Aja from City College of San
Francisco.
Incoming ECU freshman Grant Bryant (6-7) of Marietta (GA)
Kell High once scored 50 points and grabbed 35 rebounds against Marietta
Osborne.
The jewel of the signing class appears to be 6-1 point
guard Lance Tejada of Blanche Ely High School in Pompano Beach, FL, who
was averaging 23.8 points and 4.6 assists as a senior for the Tigers,
who were 18-2 going into last night's game.
Between Antonio Robinson, Prince Williams and Tejada, the
Pirates will have better depth and talent out front.
The experience that Caleb White is getting at the three
and four spots as a freshman should make him that much more effective
for the remainder of his ECU career.
Next year looks much better in terms of depth and talent.
Those factors should only improve as returning players for 2014-15 get
more playing time this season.
That's not to discount that the current Pirates might
start finishing stronger than they have been and put together a run this
year. At this point last season, the Pirates were 12-7 and their best
basketball was ahead of them.
Strategic plan
The strategic plan unveiled for ECU athletics earlier
this week isn't about adding a new facility to the landscape.
The only mention in that regard was finishing the
basketball practice facility/hall of fame memorabilia funding which
lacks about $700,000 of the $17 million overall cost at this point.
The plan does deal with improving and monitoring the
student-athlete experience for the future, an area that has been implied
and understood but seldom stated in the past.
Although it's a broad-based initiative, it has the
management style of athletic director Jeff Compher emblazoned upon it.
Hard to argue with any of the points of emphasis it puts
forth. It's an effort to transfer into reality the theory of how
athletic departments should operate.
It's well conceived and designed.
If the so-called flagship of the state system had
monitored many of these areas involved in the Pirate plan, most of its
problems could have been avoided.
Vigilance is a necessary element for big-time athletics
to function smoothly and above board.
Compher and company are apparently eliminating any
potential areas of misunderstanding at ECU.
There are also new logos which have been created for the
Pirates' entry to the AAC.
Got to have a new T-shirt and/or cap for the new league!
Stankavage has promise
From what I saw of
Shawn Stankavage in the first
round of state playoffs in 2013, ECU got a very solid prospect when it
received a commitment last week from the quarterback from Cardinal
Gibbons in Raleigh.
He's got the genes. His dad, Scott, of course, played
quarterback at UNC-Chapel Hill and in the NFL. His mother, Sue Walsh,
was a world class swimmer for the Tar Heels.
The younger Stankavage is a pass-first guy but he also
has the ability to run.
A knee injury his junior year may have caused many
programs to back off in the same way that Chris Johnson wound up at ECU
following a high school injury.
In my observation of Stankavage in action, memories were
stirred of the best high school quarterbacks I've seen. At the same
stage, he's not far behind Todd Ellis of Greensboro Page, who went on to
South Carolina in the 1980s, and I would say he's ahead of Heath Shuler
of Swain County, who played at Tennessee in the 1990s and later for the
Washington Redskins.
Audio: Talk of the
Town
The
Brian Bailey Show
airs on Pirate Radio
1250 and 930 on
Mondays at 6:30 p.m.
This week's guest
was college football
recruiting expert
Sammy Batten:
