The Southern Highland Reader

CULLOWHEE–Ryan Fagan of the Sporting News has a long question-and-answer session with Catamount senior forward Jake Robinson.

Here’s a snippet:

SN: You guys received a couple of votes in both the AP and coaches poll after beating Louisville. Is that pretty exciting for the school?
JR: It is. The students and faculty are really buying into what we’re doing now. The last couple of days here at school, everywhere I go, it’s “Oh, what a great win guys, you guys are unbelievable,” or, “We saw it on TV.” It really is good for the school, for the recognition. It’s not historically a great basketball school or a great basketball program, so for us to get some recognition and some attention is good.

Here’s the piece.

CULLOWHEE–The online basketball publication SLAM features WCU sophomore Harouna Mutombo in this Sunday post.

Mutombo, nephew of NBA great Dikembe Mutombo, was named Southern Conference Freshman of the Year last year, as well as to the SoCon All-Conference second team.

Here’s an excerpt from the story:

Playing in a mid-major conference, Mutombo’s exploits were regularly outshone by the bright star that was Stephen Curry at Davidson last season. Regardless, Harouna made a huge splash in the Southern Conference leading the Catamounts in both points (14.4) and rebounds (4.6) while placing second in assists (68), steals (56) and blocks (16) and minutes (30.4).

And it didn’t stop there. After he finished up his college season, Canada Basketball invited him to train with the National Team as they prepared for the World Championship Qualifying Tournament where he would be under the tutelage of not only Team Canada’s head coach Leo Rautins but also Raptors’ Maurizio Gherardini and Cavs assistant coach Mike Malone learning the international game, even playing a few exhibition games in Spain for Canada.

In a related matter, a Texas blogger wondered last week whether Harouna would adopt his uncle’s famous finger-wagging “no-no” after blocking an opponent’s shot. That remains to be seen, we suppose.

No-no.

CULLOWHEE–While Western Carolina’s men’s basketball program has had its moments, those moments have most often been related to individual performances, or nice late-season runs.

The Catamounts beat Nebraska, Tennessee, Florida State, Georgia Tech and Kansas State over the years. Danny Manning’s 1988 national championship Kansas Jayhawks team topped Western by only five points that year in Cullowhee. And Western once made a torrid run through the SoCon tournament and on to within a hair’s breadth of becoming the first 16th seed NCAA tourney team to knock off a number one seed, losing to Purdue by two in 1996.

WCU was also the first white southern school to admit African-American athletes (basketball players, in 1964); and a few pro players, including one of the NBA’s top current scorers, played college ball in Cullowhee.

Still, not since Western’s earliest years in the Southern Conference, some thirty years ago, have the Catamounts been regular, solid contenders, and never has a Western team been a preseason pick to win the league.

Finally, things have changed in Cullowhee. Coach Larry Hunter, one of the winningest coaches in college basketball, enters his fifth year at Western with a fully-stocked pantry of talent, and the Cats, coming off their first winning season in over a decade and a SoCon north division co-championship, are picked as the team to beat.

The Catamounts opened with a 23-point home win last weekend over NAIA St. Catherine, but leap directly into the fire tonight, when they visit number three Texas, in Austin.

Here’s a season preview from the WCU media folks:

Coming off its first winning season since 1996-97 and the program’s second conference divisional title a year ago, Western Carolina was today tabbed as the preseason favorite in the Southern Conference’s North Division as voted upon by the league’s 12 head coaches.

Western Carolina returns all five starters from a team that tied for the North Division Championship last season with an 11-9 mark in league play. The Catamounts earned 10 first-place votes and finished the balloting with 64 points, the most of any squad in the conference.

According to available records, WCU’s preseason first-place pick in the North Division is the first in program history since joining the SoCon in 1977-78. The media preseason poll will be announced next week as a part of the SoCon Preseason Head Coaches’ Teleconference.

Additionally, senior guard Brandon Giles and reigning conference freshman of the year, red-shirt sophomore Harouna Mutombo, were named to the preseason All-SoCon team as three teams put two teammates on the 10-man honorary squad.

Giles, who became the 37th different Catamount to eclipse the 1,000-point career plateau a season ago, earned third team All-SoCon plaudits from the media a season ago after ranking 13th in the league in scoring at 13.3 points per game. He led WCU in scoring on nine occasions including scoring 20-or-more five times.

Mutombo became the fourth different Catamount all-time to garner SoCon Freshman of the Year plaudits, and the first since Jarvis Hayes in 2000. The Pickering, Ontario native was the top-scoring freshman – and only one of three in the top 30 in the SoCon – with a 14.6 point per game average. He posted 24 double-digit scoring outings in his first season, reaching the 20-point plateau six times including a career-best 29 in the home win over UNC Greensboro.

Behind the first-place Catamounts, Appalachian State earned the remaining two first-place votes in the North Division and finished with 55 points. Samford (44) was chosen third while last season’s tournament champion, Chattanooga (39), was slotted fourth. Elon and UNC Greensboro tied for fifth place with 22 points apiece.

Opposite WCU in the South Division, the College of Charleston – led by preseason Player of the Year, Andrew Goudelock – was selected by the head coaches to finish first, garnering eight first-place votes. The Cougars finished 15-5 in league play a season ago and advanced to the tournament championship before falling to the Mocs.

Wofford picked up three first-place votes and finished second in the preseason balloting with 54 points. Davidson, which has won the South Division each of the past three years, earned the final first-place vote in the South Division and came in third with 48 points. The Citadel (36) finished fourth, followed by Furman (24) and Georgia Southern (21).

In addition to aforementioned Giles, Goudelock and Mutombo, the preseason all-conference team included Tony White, Jr., from the College of Charleston; Noah Dahlman and Junior Salters from Wofford. Other members of the preseason team included Will Archambault (Davidson), Kellen Brand (Appalachian State), Willie Powers (Georgia Southern) and Cameron Wells (The Citadel).

The regular season opens Friday, November 13 when nine teams hit the court with 11 of the 12 SoCon teams will begin play over that weekend. Western Carolina takes to the hardwood for the first time on Saturday, Nov. 14, as it hosts St. Catharine’s College at 7:00 pm in the Ramsey Center.

SoCon Men’s Basketball Predicted Order of Finish

North Division

Team (1st Place Votes) Total

1. Western Carolina (10) – 64

2. Appalachian State (2) – 55

3. Samford – 44

4. Chattanooga – 39

5. Elon – 22

UNC Greensboro – 22

South Division

Team (1st Place Votes) Total

1. College of Charleston (8) – 63

2. Wofford (3) – 54

3. Davidson (1) – 48

4. The Citadel – 36

5. Furman – 24

6. Georgia Southern – 21

2009-10 Preseason All-Conference Team

Will Archambault, Davidson

Kellen Brand, Appalachian State

Noah Dahlman, Wofford

Brandon Giles, Western Carolina

Andrew Goudelock, College of Charleston

Harouna Mutombo, Western Carolina

Willie Powers, Georgia Southern

Junior Salters, Wofford

Cameron Wells, The Citadel

Tony White, Jr., College of Charleston

2009-10 Preseason Player of the Year

Andrew Goudelock, College of Charleston

Williams

MIAMI–Western Carolina’s soccer team turned in a strong performance at the University of Miami Hurricane Cup tournament Labor Day weekend, falling 1-0 to nationally 22nd-ranked Miami Friday before battling No. 23 Dayton to a 0-0 draw on Sunday.

Catamount goalkeeper Caitlin Williams earned tourney MVP honors, largely on the strength of her phenomenal 14 saves against the Flyers.

More here from catamountsports.com

CULLOWHEE–A Washington Times columnist says Western’s visit to Vanderbilt is this Saturday’s season-opening mismatch 25th-most-likely to produce an upset.

Out of 38 total mismatches.

Sadly, the Cats come in 23 notches below Appalachian, which opens up at ECU. But Patrick Stevens does figure Western is five notches more likely to win in Nashville than the Citadel in Chapel Hill, and a full 13 spots more likely to come away happy than Charleston Southern is from the Swamp.

Other SoCon teams on the list: 8. Samford at Central Florida; 13. Wofford at South Florida.

Read the whole shebang here.

Softball

2009-07-10 – Former assistant joins Smith at Kansas.

2009-07-07 – Former Catamount skipper Megan Smith takes top job at Kansas.

The recent news that WCU football faced scholarship sanctions from the NCAA for low APR performance brought about this acerbic news piece from Keith Jarrett at the Asheville Citizen-Times. Catamount fans, who are convinced that Jarrett has it in for their program, were angry about the piece.

The Citizen-Times didn’t pick up on the story until some days after the penalty was announced, and when the paper finally got around to it, its coverage was a little shaky context-wise, reading far along as though the penalties were for classroom performance. The university responded that the football APR score, which is lowered when players leave the program after recording substandard grades — or leave early at all — was an anomaly caused by new coach Wagner’s house-cleaning.

This seems plausible.

Of course it would’ve seemed more reasonable if the university had stepped to the podium and addressed the issue forthwith. Instead, WCU maintained one of its patented bad news full-silences, apparently hoping the penalty would pass without media notice. In so doing it hurt itself in two ways: it implied that the university doesn’t prioritize the education of Catamount athletes or take the NCAA’s efforts seriously, and it let the Asheville Citizen-Times frame the argument against WCU and level a harmful broadside — an elementary PR mistake.

CULLOWHEE-Western Carolina’s women’s soccer team, the defending Southern Conference champion and fresh off its second trip to the NCAA tournament, will play in a tourney at the University of Miami next Labor Day weekend, according to Florida sources (Western hasn’t released its schedule yet).

The Catamounts will take on the Hurricanes on September 4 at 7pm. Western will also play the Dayton Flyers at that tournament.