The Southern Highland Reader

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

CULLOWHEE–It’s probably been a quarter-century since basketball tickets were as hot in Cullowhee as they’re going to be this year, and folks at the Ramsey Center are making sure everybody who wants them gets them.

The Western Carolina athletics department has announced broad discounts on season ticket packages, including a $125 family pack (2 adults, 2 kids) that’ll get your entire brood into any men’s or women’s game all season long.

A single adult season ticket for all games is $75.

Western’s men’s team is as deep and talented as it has been in the Ramsey Center era, and has been picked to win the Southern Conference’s north division and compete for a league championship. Western shared the north division crown with Chattanooga last year.

The Catamount women went 21-12 and won their second league tourney crown in five years last year. They went on to a 13th seed appearance in the NCAA tournament, where they fell to Vanderbilt.

Western lost three starters who combined for some 29 points and 15 rebounds a game to graduation, and coach Kellie Harper moved on to become head coach at NC State. But Western landed a strong recruiting class and a quality coach in Karen Middleton, formerly an assistant at Illinois.

After opening with St. Catherine’s (KY) in mid November, the WCU men travel to Texas and then host Arkansas-Monticello, Binghamton and Duquesne as part of the O’Reilly Auto Parts CBE Classic.

Read more about the programs, and about the season ticket offer here.

CULLOWHEE-Some local sportswriters have expressed bewilderment at a recent ranking by a nationally circulated magazine, The Sporting News, that placed Cullowhee at No. 199 among the United States’ top 399 sports cities.

Gibbs Knotts

These pundits seem perplexed that Cullowhee would be ranked 26 spots ahead of Boone, home of archrival Appalachian State University. When comparing Boone and Cullowhee, the sports reporters have focused on the higher attendance at Appalachian State football and men’s basketball games.

In their haste to criticize The Sporting News ranking, some journalists are missing a point that The Sporting News apparently did not miss – Cullowhee is home to a LOT of sporting events, many of them successful by regional and national standards.

Focusing solely on football and men’s basketball overlooks the achievements of at least seven of the other 13 Division I collegiate sports at Western Carolina. Last year, three WCU teams – women’s basketball, women’s soccer, and men’s track and field – won conference championships. Women’s track and field, baseball, men’s golf and women’s golf also have posted notably successful records.

WCU’s women’s basketball and soccer teams have been ranked in the nation’s top 20 academically. The women’s golf team regularly places individuals on the National Golf Coaches Association All-American Scholars list. In the spring 2009 semester, 87 student-athletes made the dean’s list and 18 earned perfect 4.0 grade-point averages. At Western Carolina, athletic victories usually go hand-in-hand with academic successes.

Part of what makes a sports town a sports town is tradition and history, and Western Carolina has its fair share. The first three-point shot in men’s college basketball was made in Cullowhee. Every year at NCAA basketball tournament time, the networks roll out the footage from 1996 when the Catamounts came within a whisker of being the first No. 16 seed to defeat a No. 1 seed. And Asheville’s own Henry Logan opened the door for student-athletes of his race when, in 1964, he joined the WCU basketball team and became the first African-American to play at a predominantly white institution in the South.

Adding to the game-day experience in Cullowhee is WCU’s Pride of the Mountains Marching Band, whose crowd-pleasing halftime shows over the years are being recognized nationally by the John Phillip Sousa Foundation, which has awarded the band the 2009 Sudler Trophy – the Heisman Trophy of collegiate marching bands.

Aside from Catamount athletics, Cullowhee also features outstanding outdoor sporting opportunities. The area is a haven for cyclists, hosting numerous group rides and the annual Tour de Tuck bicycle ride. Anglers flock to Cullowhee for many miles of rivers and streams, and Cullowhee is a world-class boating and kayaking destination. Some Olympic athletes train in the area.

The university engages students in outdoor experiences through its Base Camp Cullowhee, a campus organization that hosts nearly 2,000 people per year on outdoor adventures and supplies students with low-cost outdoor gear and supplies. Base Camp employees serve as a resource to the Cullowhee community, providing trip advice, trail maps, and other outdoor tips to local individuals and families, and to hundreds of the millions of Americans who visit Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway annually.

Is Cullowhee really the 199th best sports town in the United States? Scientifically, I can’t say, but when you look at the entire picture, why not? What I can do is invite sports fans of all persuasions to come to Cullowhee and find out. Attend a soccer match or a women’s basketball game. Bring your bike and ride the Ring of Fire. Float down the beautiful Tuckaseigee River. Or bring your binoculars and watch track or cross country or some other Olympic sport. You may discover that The Sporting News has it right – sporting opportunities are abundant in Cullowhee.

Gibbs Knotts is faculty athletics representative at Western Carolina University where he teaches political science and public affairs.  In his free time, he attends Catamount sporting events and enjoys Cullowhee’s many outdoor opportunities.

CULLOWHEE–Western Carolina University was recently criticized for its initial refusal to release a young student athlete from her commitment to play womens basketball at the school.

Last week the university released the player, Kelsey Evans, from her national letter of intent. She will play this year for conference rival Elon.

In a column in today’s Asheville Citizen-Times, WCU faculty member and athletics committee member Justin Menickelli takes us for a tour of the National Letter of Intent.

An excerpt:

Critics of the NLI are many. Some call the NLI a “contract of adhesion,” because it heavily favors athletic departments over recruits. Because of NCAA signing periods, issues surrounding the NLI are most prevalent in college basketball. A lot can change from the time a recruit signs an NLI in November of their senior year of high school and when they arrive on a college campus 10 months later. The fairness of the NLI is most often called into question when the head coach leaves for another school. In these cases, the recruit is locked in to play for a new coach. This happens often in the coaching carousel that has become NCAA basketball.

Another:

Of course, signing an NLI before the senior year of high school can benefit the recruit. If athletes do not perform well as seniors or become injured, they have a sort-of safety net. Some student-athletes report playing their senior year under less stress because they have committed to an institution. Competing in high school with a signed NLI also prevents other schools from recruiting a student-athlete: the equivalent of an NCAA “do not call list.”

Read the column here.