Deacs getting to the heart of the matter
By Jordan Webster
Sports Editor

Maybe you didn’t expect a team of grizzled, experienced veterans – five seniors and a junior comprise the core of the rotation – to play like this early in the season. Maybe you should.

Skip Prosser would probably tell you that his troops haven’t acquitted themselves as well as either he or they would have liked six games into his initial season as head coach. A 5-1 record would bring a smile to his face, but the manner in which those five games have been won likely puts a knot in his stomach. Surely, expectations of a high-octane offense and a frenzied, ball-hawking defense have not been met. The Deacons posed as an over-35 team of masons in their Thanksgiving trip to New York City, inundating Madison Square Garden, heaving bricks from inside and out. The Deacs shot only 37 percent from the field as they eeked out a Preseason NIT semifinal win over Fresno State, and hit on only 41 percent of their field goal attempts in a loss to Syracuse in the tournament’s title game, including a miserable 24 percent from three-point range. Against Minnesota, the Deacons shot 42 percent from the floor, but only 20 percent from behind the arc.

While Prosser’s long-range snipers have been streaky at best, it’s not all their fault. The only easy buckets that the team’s full-court pressure has created are for their opponents, and Prosser has been forced to largely abandon his preferred style of play for a half-court defensive set. But it’s been a catch-22: the slower half-court game has left the smaller Deacons vulnerable on the blocks, and at times they have been pounded in the paint and on the boards by stronger, more physical squads.

But the Demon Deacons, unranked at the beginning of the season, have cracked into the top 25 in both national polls, placing 23rd in this week’s ESPN/USA Today Coaches’ Poll and 25th in the Associated Press rankings.

Difficulties or not, the Deacons are 5-1, and could easily be a perfect 6-0 were it not for a brief span midway through second half against the Orangemen in which the Deacons forgot how to advance the ball past midcourt.

Lousy shooting, less than desirable defense, and still winning? How?

“We stuck together, we didn’t give up,” senior forward Antwan Scott explained following the Deacons come-from-behind win over Minnesota Nov. 27.

“It’s a lot of heart. We’ve been down before, especially in the last game (against Syracuse), and we couldn’t pull it back out. We weren’t going to do that again. We had to come out and just keep pushing each other and get the win.”

And it has been the seasoned lineup that has snatched victory from near defeat on several occasions this season already, and it’s only November. Senior guard Ervin Murray fired a perfect inbounds pass to senior forward Darius Songaila for the game-winner in the season opener over UNC-Wilmington.

Senior guard Broderick Hicks sank a pair of free throws late in the Deacs’ second win of the year, a five-point victory over Arkansas in Fayetteville, Ark., Nov. 18. Songaila saved the day again in New York, slamming home a Josh Howard miss with 1.7 seconds left to give the Deacons a 62-61 win.

But perhaps more indicative of an experienced team is how they respond to adversity and failure. Last season, the Deacs suffered their first loss to North Carolina, a heartbreaking defeat in the final seconds from which the team never recovered.
Near misses against Georgia Tech, Cincinnati and Duke would follow later in the season. This season, after a tough loss to a good Syracuse team, the Demon Deacons bounced back, led, of course, by their seniors.

Against the Gophers, Scott converted a three-point play late in the second half against Minnesota to start an 11-0 Deacon run to end the game, and just 30 seconds later, Hicks hit his only shot of the game, drilling a three-pointer to put the Deacons in front for good. Scott would snuff out a Minnesota layup attempt for good measure. They aren’t winning pretty, but they are winning. And it’s the experience that is making the difference.

“Hicks doesn’t make a shot all game – until he needs one,” Minnesota Head Coach Dan Monson lamented after his Gophers were the victims of the latest Deacon rally. “That’s a team of experience.”

“Seniors are supposed to make plays like that,” Prosser added of Hicks’ three. “Through the time I’ve coached, I’ve shown a proclivity to go with veteran guys, unless there’s a disparity in ability (between the veterans and the younger players) or in how they’re playing.

“I like to let the kids win the game or not (win the game)… I think our guys have to learn how to extricate themselves from difficult situations. (Against Syracuse) they did not, but tonight they did.”

And while Prosser’s blood pressure will soar and hair will gray should his Demon Deacons fail to integrate better play with their penchant for last-second miracles, he does have a corps of players that have proven their worth with the game in the balance.
His players have endured six games in a merciless two-and-a-half week stretch to open the season, and have emerged in better standing – at least according to the national rankings – than when they embarked.

“I feel like Tom Hanks on that island,” a weary Prosser cracked after his team’s win over Minnesota. “I was ready to start drawing pictures of faces on the basketballs on the sideline. But somehow we survived.

“Somehow, someway we had the wherewithal to make enough big plays down the stretch to get the win. I’m pleased with our players. They showed great character.”

Which leaves the head man pleased, in spite of poor shooting and subpar defense.
“Sometimes I say I’m really happy and I look so sad,” he said after the Minnesota game, bringing the 16-day spurt, in which his Deacons sprinted a marathon, to a close. “But I am happy.”

Now Prosser has a full week to prepare his Deacons for the No. 8 Kansas Jayhawks in a matchup in Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence on Dec. 4. Don’t be surprised if a sharper Deacon team takes the floor, fresh off its first significant practice time in nearly a month.

It is clear that the Deacs have yet to fully adapt to Prosser’s system, but the transition will come in time. He’s working on the skill and the strategy. Four years ago, it was not the talent of this class of Hicks, Songaila, Scott, Murray and guard Craig Dawson that was in doubt. Eventually, that much will be quite evident.
But until then, experience and heart will work.