The Creighton Bluejays open their 2011-12 basketball season Friday night with the start of the Dale Howard Classic multi-team event. The Bluejays’ first two games of this MTE will be against North Carolina A&T and Chicago State — two teams that you may not hear much about the rest of the season in the big picture of the NCAA hoops scene. However, everyone starts undefeated and anything can happen.
CU fans may not know much about the Aggies program that comes to Omaha for the season opener. We turned to Jeff Mills who covers college sports for the Greensboro News & Record. A 23-year veteran, Mills has spent the past 12 years at the News and Record as a writer and editor, where he covers the ACC, UNC-Greensboro and North Carolina A&T. He provides us some insight on the Aggies and what to expect Friday night as the Bluejays open the season at CenturyLink Center.
White & Blue Review: Can you give us a little background on North Carolina A&T and their basketball history?
Jeff Mills: The Aggies began playing men’s basketball in 1952. Once upon a time, A&T was the dominant team in the one-bid MEAC, a league founded in 1971. They’ve won 15 MEAC tournament titles and been to the NCAA Tournament nine times, including seven in a row from 1982-1988. But they haven’t been back since their last two MEAC tournament titles back-to-back in ’94 and ’95. It’s been downhill ever since.
They were dreadful for three seasons under Curtis Hunter, who was fired in 2003 after a 1-26 record. Jerry Eaves, the former Louisville star, took over and is now in his ninth season. Eaves has brought stability to the program, but his best finish is third in the MEAC in 2006-07. In recent years, they’ve hovered around .500. Where Eaves has won is in the classroom: A&T consistently has the best or second-best APR in the MEAC. In fact, if the new academic postseason standards recently approved by the NCAA were active right now, A&T and Hampton would be the only MEAC programs eligible to compete in the NCAA tournament.
WBR: With so many basketball schools in the state of North Carolina, how hard is it for the Aggies to compete around all of that as far as recruiting and even fan support?
JM: A&T simply cannot recruit head-to-head with the likes of North Carolina, Duke, N.C. State, and Wake Forest. They struggle to recruit against mid-majors including Davidson, UNC-Asheville, Appalachian State, etc. So the Aggies cast a wide net. Eaves recruits nationally, and he’s had his best success around Louisville, Kentucky, and in the Maryland/Washington, D.C. area.
That said, the Aggies do get some players from North Carolina, most of them from right here in Greensboro or nearby (maybe a 100-mile radius). The 17 players on this year’s roster come from eight states and one foreign country. Only three come from North Carolina. Eaves tends to bring players along slowly. He’ll take chances on recruits he sees as late bloomers, so his freshmen tend to watch and learn. It’s an old-school approach.
As far as fan support, A&T’s fans are almost exclusively alumni, students and folks who live in the neighborhoods surrounding the campus.
WBR: The MEAC and the SWAC are somewhat lumped together each year and are known for taking a lot of road games in the non-conference. How much of that is done to help support those schools athletic programs and how important is that for the Aggies to take on these guarantee games?
JM: A&T went 11-2 at home last year, and 4-15 away from the cozy 5,700-seat Corbett Center. Even that’s misleading, because one of the “road” wins was against crosstown rival UNC-Greensboro at the Greensboro Coliseum. The “guarantee games” — in football and basketball — pay a lot of bills for the A&T athletics program. This year, A&T will play just three home games before January. The Aggies are not home at all in December, when they have a stretch of nine consecutive road games all over the country (Hawaii, California, Texas, Ohio, Indiana, Florida).
WBR: Where is A&T expected to finish in the MEAC this season? Is there a reason that they did not play any exhibition games before the season started?
JM: It’s hard to say, but A&T likely is a middle-of-the-pack team this season. Truth is, it looks like there are no dominant teams in the MEAC. That tournament will be wide-open. A&T typically doesn’t play many exhibition games. There are some good D-III and JUCO teams around here — and some spirited, informal pickup games.
WBR: Which Aggies will Creighton fans be interested in watching on Friday night in their matchup with the Bluejays?
JM: Good question. A&T was built around a great player — 6-foot-10 Thomas Coleman — last season. Coleman averaged a double-double, and Eaves is convinced that when the NBA lockout ends, Coleman will end up on the Charlotte Bobcats roster. Even if that doesn’t happen, Coleman will have a long and lucrative career playing overseas if he stays healthy. But the rest of this team stood around and watched Coleman work in the low post last year — especially in the last five minutes of games. That makes it hard to judge what A&T will look like this season. Best guess: They’ll play full-court pressure defense and shoot a lot of jump shots. Nic Simpson is a fearless perimeter shooter, and 6-foot-8 wing Austin Witter looks poised to have a breakout season.
WBR: With 11 players on the roster that are either juniors or seniors, how will it help having a veteran team like this throughout the season?
JM: It should help, particularly in the backcourt where shooting guard Simpson and point guard Marc Hill have played a lot of basketball together. But this is a team full of role players with no clear-cut star — unless cerebral Austin Witter emerges as a late bloomer the way Thomas Coleman did in his junior and senior years.
WBR: How did North Carolina A&T decide to take part in the Dale Howard Classic MTE versus some other multi-team option?
JM: Frankly, at that time of the season the Aggies are going to take the most lucrative deal they can land. They’ll travel anywhere and play anybody in November and December as long as they can line it up closely with the scheduled breaks from classwork around Thanksgiving and between semesters.
WBR: What is your final prediction? What would it take for NC A&T to walk out of CenturyLink with a win?
JM: The Aggies are a longshot to win. Even though they return four starters and a bunch of reserves, they’re still a team that will be searching for an identity for the first two months. For the Aggies, the goals for November and December are to see the country and toughen themselves up for the MEAC schedule. Seven or eight of their non-conference opponents — including Creighton — are better than every team in the MEAC. The only way A&T wins this game is if Creighton fails miserably to handle full-court pressure defense.