Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Angelo State University Preview

Baylor's first opponent this year in a game that counts is Angelo State. ASU has a new coach and is going to be in a bit of transition as they will have to replace two of their top three scorers, and their 6th leading scorer as well. They also lose their leading rebounder from a year ago. All told, they lose 30.2ppg (40%), 15rpg (39.2%), 97 total assists (26.7%), and 56 steals (26%).

The good news is that they return talented junior Quinn Barfield. Barfield is a G/F that was the leading scorer (15.4) last year, second on the team in rebounds (5.4) and steals (29) and blocked an astounding 24 shots. He shot better than 50% from the floor as well.

The question will be, who else is going to be on the team to help him?

Nobody else returning averaged more than 10 points/game. One player who came close, averaging 9.4/game, is Ontario McKee, a 5-11 PG. He'll be a senior and likely counted on to get the offense rolling. And despite only playing in 22 games (of 27 possible) and starting only 15, McKee racked up 93 assists and 34 steals.

Angelo State is going to be very undersized compared to Baylor. Their tallest players are 6-7, and only one of those players saw time last year. Of the players that averaged 15 or more minutes a game last year, there is one player at 6-5, and two at 6-4.

Angelo state went 8-19 overall last year, and 0-12 in the Lone Star Conference. Their new head coach has been an assistant coach at Memphis and most recently UNT. He was hired in April 2006, and has said he will install pressure defense and an up-tempo offense.

Curiously, Baylor does not appear on the Angelo State University Men's Basketball schedule. It does show two exhibition games against UT-Arlington and UT-San Antonio prior to the date given on our schedule for the game, so they will have at the least seen some game action by the time they come to Waco.