NSU: The competition rages on as Spartans sort out their lineup
NORFOLK — Steven Whitley didn’t know what to expect, and he wasn’t alone.
When the Norfolk State senior guard stepped onto the court against Campbell for a so-called “secret scrimmage” at Echols Hall on Oct. 24, uncertainty abounded.
The Spartans, after all, were fielding a team that features 10 new faces against someone other than themselves for the first time. To make things even less certain, the Camels were coming off a season in which they won 20 games and a Big South regularseason title.
So when NSU’s piecemeal, wholly unproven assemblage of players actually won the scrimmage by five points, it got Whitley’s attention.
“It was a shocker to me, man,” he said. “I’m definitely happy moving forward.”
Moving forward in earnest starts with today’s regular-season opener against Greensboro College at home. It continues with a staccato schedule that includes games against both the rather obscure — Penn State Wilkes-Barre and The Apprentice School — and the gigantic — a Nov. 12 guarantee game at Ole Miss.
As the Spartans, coming off a 22-14 season that included a regular-season MEAC title and a first-round upset of top-seeded Alabama in the NIT, make their way through the early part of the schedule, it’s likely that seventhyear coach Robert Jones will continue to mold his rotation.
As of just last week, Jones had named all of two starters. And he’s fine with the ongoing competition that has bred.
“I tell the guys all the time: Talent is talent, but whoever competes the hardest is going to win that game,” Jones said. “You can be more talented than the other team, but if they compete harder, they’re going to win. So if we can have a little bit of talent and have a competitive nature, then I think we can be a pretty good team.”
Whitley, a former star at Booker T. Washington High with a bit of a vagabond past, is certainly among the talent. A 6-foot-3 former bit player at Robert Morris after a prep year at Fork Union Military Academy, Whitley averaged 9.6 points, 5.2 rebounds and a team-high 4 assists for NSU as a junior.
But no other returning player — and there aren’t many after a series of graduations and surprise transfers over the offseason — averaged more than 3.5 points per game.
Of the 73.7 points NSU scored per contest in 2018-19, the players who accounted for 16.5 are back.
Jones has named only Whitley
and senior guard Jermaine Bishop, a senior who sat out last season under NCAA rules after transferring from Saint Louis University, to the lineup.
The rest, Jones hoped, would sort itself out during the team’s remaining preseason practices and early games.
The competition rages on. “I think it is healthy,” said the 6-1 Bishop, who describes himself as a “playmaker” who likes to get his teammates involved. “It’s a competitive mindset nature, which is a good thing. We need that going in every night competing.”
Among the pleasant early surprises is 6-7 freshman swing man Yoro Sidibe, a native of Senegal by way of a Long Island, N.Y., high school who scored 17 points against Campbell.
Sophomore guard Joe Bryant scored 15 points against the Camels, and Whitley said he’s been especially impressed with the play of 6-1 freshman guard Caleb Dawkins.
The optimism remains cautious as Jones and his staff figure things out. But the Campbell scrimmage helped.
“It’s uncertainty coming into the season (with) 10 new guys,” said Jones, who was named the 2018-19 MEAC Coach of the Year and received a three-year contract extension over the summer. “You don’t know who’s going to step up. You don’t know how the team is going to be, especially against a team that won their regular-season title last year. The scrimmage was definitely promising.”