2008 ASU HOOPS PREVIEW: Rams just want consistentcy

ALBANY – The Albany State men’s basketball team has made it a habit of peaking when the SIAC tournament begins.

Case in point — the Rams, with a losing record, won the 2007 tournament title and then in 2008 took eventual champion Benedict to double overtime in the second round before losing.

After a first-round loss last season against Kentucky State, Rams coach Chris Cameron said he wants something different from the past few years – consistency during the regular season. That quest starts tonight when the Rams open their season at Georgia Southwestern. The Rams won last year’s meeting, 76-66.

“What we want to do is start having a mindset of playing well at the end of the year, but also starting out well, as well,” said Cameron, who starred at Dougherty High School and Tulane University.

Georgia Southwestern, on the other hand, struggled early in its season-opening loss last week against West Alabama, 76-63. Hurricanes coach Mike Leeder hopes the competition against Albany State can become an annual matchup.

“I’ve known Chris for a while and, No. 1, he’s a great guy and a great coach,” Leeder said. “I enjoy competing with him. He does things the right way. With our programs to be so close (45 minutes apart); I hope we can continue playing each other into the future.”

Doing that would at least give the Rams an early-round break instead of having to face a top seed in either the first or second round. Although Albany State made that kind of run to the tournament title in 2007, beating top seed Benedict in the semifinals that year, a championship run for a lower-seeded team is often the exception than the norm simply due to the exhaustion of having to play on every day of the tourney. Albany State’s last winning regular season was 2006 when the Rams went 15-12 and finished 16-13 overall.

Point guard Sean Glenn, who also was a starter on the 2007 tournament championship team, also is tired of playing highly seeded teams in the early rounds due to a bad regular-season record.

“It’s been really frustrating because we’ve got more potential and talent than what we have showed,” said Glenn, who is a second-team preseason All-SIAC pick after averaging 11.1 points and ranking third in the conference with a 4.5 assist average. “We would lose focus on one slip and then lose the game. That happened too many times.”

After winning the first two games last season, Albany State lost seven of its next eight and were eventually bounced by Kentucky State in the first round of the SIAC Tournament.

Since Cameron was hired as full-time coach for 2007-08 (he was interim the previous season), he is hoping the talent he has brought in will come together.

“One thing about that, in NCAA Division II, it takes a good two or three years and that’s when you see the fruition of your presence at the university,” Cameron said. “In the past, we hadn’t really recruited a lot of JUCO kids. There were a lot of four-year kids and they developed in the latter parts of their careers. JUCO kids, however, are ready. That’s what we’ve been doing lately, focusing on junior colleges.”

Or technical colleges, for that matter.

Ex-Albany Tech standout Truett O’Neal is a forward Cameron feels can bring a new intensity to not only the regular season, but also the Rams’ practices.

“Truett will be huge,” Cameron said. “He brings a certain energy level and enhances everyone else’s energy level. We haven’t had that in the past few years.”