Lady Aggies Enjoy New Role As "The Hunters"

The Lady Aggies are ready to ball. They are being overlooked. Coach Patricia Cage-Bibbs probably likes it like this.

On senior night she had five freshmen on the floor at one time to see how they worked together. But this team has gotten tougher, thanks to Jaleesa Sams. The sister grinds for every point and rebound. She has been great for the program. Reisha Bullock is playing well at the right time and Lillian Bullock will help with running the team.

Jaquayla Berry, first team ALL-MEAC, will be ready. She can take over a game. Winston Salem will get a treat.

The Aggies can win it all.

Keys to the win:

It’s funny but I think that Nikia Gorham will come alive again like she did during the WNIT run last year. The upperclassmen will need to produce until the freshmen get comfortable on this big stage. Now is the Time!

Now is the Time!

The Aggie Men will roll 30 minutes west on I-40 tonight to take on Morgan State. Tip-off is at 8pm. The Lawrence Joel Coliseum will come alive as the Aggie faithful find out if ‘now is the time’.

Now is the time!

The writers picked the Aggies to finish 8th and the Aggies finished 5th. They really could have finished higher but they stumbled a few times during the season. This team is not afraid of anybody. They have played everyone in the league close and have improved along the way. The freshmen are getting minutes and their roles are defined. This team can win the MEAC Tournament. That’s right, I said it! I don’t know when this dawned on me. It could have been me saying ‘we should have beaten team xyz’, or me saying that ‘the top team is just squeaking by the other league foes’. Be that as it may, it is what it is. Now is the time!

Thomas Coleman will give the Triad one last look. He will dunk in your face and will not grimace. He keeps a poker face. I have never seen him get a technical foul. If anything, it would be for hanging on the rim trying not to step on a foe below. His style is his style. We may not see another player who will block as many shots in Aggie blue and gold. He could not catch Marvin Webster (839 blks (http://www.morganstatebears.com/hof.aspx?hof=1&path=&kiosk= ) to Coleman's 300 blks), but that was asking too much. Now is the time to see him.

Coach Jerry Eaves has the team playing good basketball at the right time of the season. They seem to play better in front of the Aggie Fans. Winston-Salem will be a good fit for motivation.

This team can win it all.

Keys to the win:

The opponents will double team Coleman. The outside jumper or the cut to the basket pass will be key. I expect the Aggies to attack the rim. They got many teams in foul trouble this season. The Aggies will need to hit their free throws, to keep making the opponent pay for their fouls.

Tobacco Road II

First things first, the Aggie Men must stay focused on South Carolina State (1-3) when the Bulldogs visit Corbett on Saturday. The Aggies are 3-2 in the conference and need to keep pace with the top teams in the league. The top teams will play one another on Saturday and once the dust settles, the Aggies hope to be sitting near third place. SCSU is not a bad team and the Aggies have found weird ways to lose games - with turnovers or poor shooting from the foul line for instance. However, the Aggies have consistently shot well from the field and behind the 3-pt arc. This team needs the crowd at Corbett to give them an easy win for a change.

On Monday night, NCCU returns to the Dawg Pound for the first time in nearly 20 years. This matchup could be billed as the battle of Tobacco Road II since Durham was home to the former American and L&M tobacco factories and Greensboro is the headquarters of Lorillard. It is a legendary rivalry that finally will give Corbett another sellout. Plus the A&T men’s basketball squad will perhaps see more home support on Monday night than homecoming provides for the football team. Get your popcorn ready!

Rough Road For Lady Aggies

The Aggie Women (3-2) lost both road games against Howard and Hampton last weekend. When was the last time that happened? Wow! I forget that this team is young and if the veterans have an off night or get foul trouble, the Lady Aggies could struggle. The good thing is that the new players are getting all of the work that they need this year. Mikala Scott had a team-high 21 points against Howard. I view this as a minor bump in the road and Coach Bibbs will have them ready for the upcoming home games against South Carolina State (2-2 in the MEAC) and NCCU (2-15 overall). This team can definitely ball; they will be in the mix during tourney time.

Welcome home, Lady Aggies!

Wow! The Lady Aggies has been on the road a long time. They played at home against UNC-Charlotte and Norfolk State back before the holidays ... and that’s it!

They have taken their lumps on the road and tested the young players. Veterans Jaleesa Sams (16.2ppg., 5.2 rpg) and Jaquayla Berry (10.7 ppg, & 7.1rpg ) have held it together while the team grows and learn. Nikia Gorham always has her hands full playing center. She does the dirty work and sometimes picks up too many fouls. One thing for sure, she will help win at least one game for the Aggies like she did during the post-season run last year.

The young players can ball. They still have this nervous vibe sometimes, but they will take the shot if needed. The home court advantage in Corbett will be good for this team.

It will not be an easy conference road ahead, but the Aggies have the makings of a good team. They lost 77-71 at Clemson and will come home to Corbett this weekend.

Welcome home Sisters!

Eighth Place for the Aggie Men? No way

This is not an eighth place team. Some preseason polls said that the Aggie Men would finish in eighth place because of the loss of last year’s top scorers but based on how they have played thus far in 2010-11, I think we can finish near the top of the MEAC.

One thing I can say about last year is that if you got in the game, you had a chance to shoot. The 3-point shot was king and it scared a lot of conference teams we played. The Aggies were in most games they played, however, it was the finishing of the games that ultimately hurt them. Now Thomas Coleman (13.8ppg, 11.1 Reb, 3.3 blocks) has emerged as the league’s best big man in my opinion. He always possessed defensive skills, but now he has added rebounding and scoring to his resume. More importantly, the Aggies can now command a double team inside which opens up the offense.

FAMU and Bethune-Cookman come into Corbett Sports Center for the Saturday/Monday games not knowing what to expect. Will the fans inside the Dawg Pound be hyped? Will the Aggies be ready to play? Will the Aggies’ 3-point shot fall? Well, I don’t know, but it has the makings of a potential double sweep, with the A&T men and women winning both games.

Nic Simpson (13.7ppg) and Marc Hill (11.4 ppg, 3.5 apg) have provided the stability in the backcourt that the young team needed. The few turnovers that they have made this year have occurred while trying to make a play, instead of throwing the ball away facing a new defensive look. The team is playing better. The team looks better. It averages 70.1 points per game and 42 rebounds per game. First and second place in the conference respectively, as of Jan 5. And while Simpson went for 20 points at Stanford and 17 points at Arizona St., it seems like he has still been cool and will soon catch fire.

Eighth Place is reserved for someone else. This is a good time for Aggie Basketball.

The Promise

This Aggie basketball season is over and it put me in the mind of a song by jazz great John Coltrane: “The Promise”.

In that piece ‘Trane and his band mates play the "head" (or theme), and then ‘Trane lays back and lets the piano player (McCoy Tyner) take over for the first five plus minutes of the song. Eventually, he comes back in with power, heart and soul. He is playing the soprano sax now instead of his normal tenor sax.

The Aggie men started off the season with a big win at Norfolk State and the Aggie faithful were excited. But it seemed as the season wore on their shooting percentage suffered and the other teams were able to exploit A&T’s pressure defense and score.

The league appeared to like playing at a faster pace against A&T. Quicker shots, open looks, contested looks - it was all there for anyone who wanted some.

And at times it was an “outside in” approach instead of an “inside out” approach. High percentage shots rule down the stretch. It’s funny, but this Aggie team had talent and concerned every league foe that they faced.

They just could not complete or close out many of the games.

The good news is that they did show flashes of playing a complete game and some of the freshmen started or played all year. The bad news is that this should have been the year to make a deep run for a title. The balance was there … on paper. “The Promise”.

The Aggie women, like ‘Trane, laid back and exploded on teams in the post season.

Laid back is unfair because they got after it every night during league play. The faithful got spoiled after the women knocked down each challenge. Besides, they had Auburn in Corbett and played them tough. I don’t know if or when Tweet Cook and Lamona Smalley will make the Hall of Fame, but I do know that they gave us their all.

Now back to the spoiled vibe and explosion.

Everyone felt that the Lady Aggies would win the MEAC tournament title. They lost. The Aggie nation was hurt. Everybody wanted one more chance.

It showed everyone that they could be gotten!

Everybody else it seemed, was having fun while his or her teams still played in the tourney. Blue Death Valley regrouped, the Aggie Nation regrouped. The team regrouped, and went on a run that reminded me of that solo by ‘Trane in “The Promise”.

They all came back against Wake Forest and UNC- Charlotte, with power, heart, soul, and focus.

The Aggie Nation took over the gym. They did not come to watch, they came to push the team. I saw fans that normally just checked out the action, open up and get loud. And it became infectious.

The players that hit their first shots and the show was rolling. And just as the ‘Trane solo finally stops, the Lady Aggies could not beat the eventual WNIT finalist Miami. “The Promise.”

So, where are we?

We have an Aggie nation that has turned heads in North Carolina. This is old news to us, but it allows others to market to us or schedule to us and hence, we can wedge our influence.

We have to promise that we will turn it on again, and support it from the hip.

The A&T administration has to support the teams with needed staff and equipment. It must keep the promise with the fans. The work of Ten Web TV and the broadcasting of the men’s and women’s games has been great. Cast down your buckets again and make Corbett an truly unique experience. The Maniacs need to come back. Keep creating. The graduation of the players is a given and is going at a good clip.

The coaches and players must continue to get better. The league has a lot of young talent and is growing. The women are being gained upon and the men have to gain on Morgan. We have good recruiting classes coming in.

So here we are. What a great year to be an Aggie. And with “the promise” of next year looming, I can rest my pen for now.