ETSU rolling with new veteran leadership
East Tennessee State men’s basketball coach Steve Forbes knew he had lost five of his top nine scorers from last season’s NCAA tournament team, but it wasn’t like the 2017-18 team was starting over.
In some respects, this team is deeper and could end up being better than last year’s.
The Buccaneers are 15-4 and 7-0 in the Southern Conference heading into tonight’s home game against Mercer. ETSU uses an all-senior starting lineup, which helped the Bucs navigate a difficult early-season nonconference schedule.
The biggest issue at first was those players adjusting to new roles, and the Bucs started 2-3 as a result, but they’ve won 13 of their last 14 games with the lone blemish a 68-66 loss at eighth-ranked Xavier — a game ETSU led 51-29 early in the second half.
“The guys had to adjust to some more accountability when the game was on the line, but they’ve found their way,” Forbes said Tuesday. “We’ve always been pretty good on defense, and the offense got there.”
Ten Bucs average as least 10 minutes per game. The depth has helped them figure out different ways to defeat opponents, evidenced by scoring at least 85 points in conference defeats of Samford, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Virginia Military Institute but grinding out wins over UNC Greensboro and Furman, the latter on a Desonta Bradford right-handed floater with four seconds to play.
“Sometimes on your team you want separation. You want a clear five and top three-four off the bench,” Forbes said, “but we could start a lot of different guys and it wouldn’t matter. It’s a credit to them because they’re unselfish; they’re worried about winning more than stats.”
The Mercer women have rolled through their schedule so far, winners of 15 straight games. That streak will be put to the test this week.
Coach Susie Gardner’s Bears (18-2 overall) will have road games at ETSU and UTC, which have a combined 8-2 ETSU head coach Steve Forbes questions a official’s call during a game against UTC on Jan. 6. record in SoCon play. The Bucs, like the Bears, are 5-0 in league play, while the Mocs started 3-0 before losses at ETSU and Furman.
Mercer, the preseason
league favorite, is an upperclassman-heavy team. Still, Gardner has been pleased by how the Bears have found ways to get better.
“It’s been fun to see us continually grow,” Gardner said after a 72-50 win over Western Carolina last Saturday. “They like each other; there’s no selfishness on the team. … There’s absolutely no jealousy.”
Mercer tests loom
Players of the week
Furman’s Celena Taborn and Samford’s Justin Coleman are the SoCon players of the week, the league announced Tuesday.
Taborn, a 6-foot-3 freshman forward, averaged 16 points and 12 rebounds while blocking four shots in her team’s 2-1 week. In her first start she had 19 points and 18 rebounds in the Paladins’ 59-58 win over UTC. She added 18 points and nine rebounds in 17 minutes against Converse on Monday.
Coleman averaged a double-double in losses to Wofford and Furman. He had 20 points in each game, with 12 assists against the Terriers and eight against the Paladins.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress. com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenleytfp.