We interrupt your football watching to bring you this message: Basketball season is beginning.
Perfectly natural to think it might have slipped by you, what with Lane Kiffin, prep playoffs, Lane Kiffin, the Cowboys’ (lack of) defense, Lane Kiffin, and the immediate/future of the College Football Playoff.
And, of course, Lane Kiffin.
(Though our boy Lane has been trying to drop hints to y’all all season long by having his players dunk a basketball on the sideline on a six-foot goal!)
They may be down the college basketball food chain a bit, but the Centenary Gents have also cranked up their season. It’s the second for coach J.A. Anglin and it should look dramatically different than it did a year ago.
Anglin is all about trying to build the Gents’ program, but last year it was mostly trying to identify what materials were needed for the construction project. Even though he had coached on multiple levels of college basketball, Anglin found himself learning on the fly.
Not anymore.
“We got through last season and got a feel for what Division III is,” said Anglin, who came to Centenary from the junior college ranks at BPCC. “We started off rocky but finished strong and ended up getting into the (SCAC conference) semifinals last year. We had a whole off-season to identify guys that we wanted to bring I and we feel pretty good about that.”
And it wasn’t a stopgap recruiting class. There are two junior college transfers but most of the others are high school players. Included in this year’s roster are local products Niran Ogunyemi (Captain Shreve), Antonio Dixon (Huntington) and John Carmody (Loyola).
There are 15 players from Louisiana on the current Centenary roster.
Centenary may only be nine miles away from BPCC, but Anglin quickly found out there’s a world of difference.
“NCAA Division 3 level is different,” he said. “There’s more emphasis on academics, so you’re recruiting an entirely different kid. Last year getting the job so late, I was only able to bring one (player) that had the academic requirements to get into Centenary.
“We feel like we’ve created a lot of competition within our team, which is going to help us grow and get better,” Anglin said. “That’s something that was lacking last year. We feel pretty good about the direction we’re going in.”
In addition to two exhibitions on the road, the Gents opened the season with a seven-point loss at Belhaven last week and will play at Millsaps tonight. The home opener will be Tuesday against East Texas Baptist – the first of four straight games at the Gold Dome.
“It will be nice to be home for the remainder of the month,” Anglin said.
Having a full season under his belt, Anglin feels much different at this point than he did last year.
“We are still very young, but we did get good experience last year,” he said. “There won’t be the shock-and-awe factor this year going into games on the road. Last year it took us some time to get going because we were so young. Everybody knows what to expect in terms of practice and how we operate and how we go through scouting reports. We’ve really committed to the development part of college athletics, which is what it should be about.”
Centenary is coming off an 11-16 season a year ago and one that made for an interesting first year as head coach in Division III.
“I’ve had to learn how to adapt,” Anglin said, “because there was a lot of adapting being done last year.”
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com