By JIMMIE TRAMEL Sports Writer on May 22, 2012, at 6:35 PM Updated on 5/22 at 10:54 PM
ORU SPORTS
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How about five questions regarding the Oral Roberts University men’s basketball program?
And -- full disclosure -- I’m stealing info from an ORU coaches luncheon that took place Tuesday at the Zio’s restaurant located across the street from the Mabee Center.
1, Will Scott Sutton continue to embrace a scheduling philosophy that seems to suggest he will play anybody, anywhere, any time?
Sutton is glad ORU will play home games against in-state opponents Tulsa and Oklahoma next season. He hopes to be rewarded with a Bracket Buster home game against a to-be-named-later opponent.
The Golden Eagles will go to Alaska for Thanksgiving. They’ll play in the Great Alaska Shootout and face Loyola Marymount in the opener. Other teams in the field are Belmont (five NCAA Tournament appearances in the last seven years), Alaska-Anchorage, Northeastern, Texas State and Charlotte.
Sutton said ORU will play games at Arizona, Texas-El Paso and Missouri State. He said the Golden Eagles also must play at Pacific as a payback game for a past Bracket Buster contest.
That schedule, or at least what we know about it, seems to be reasonable without being brutal. Stay tuned.
2, Who should the Southland Conference (it’s ORU’s home beginning next fall) add as new members?
Houston Baptist agreed to come aboard one year after ORU. Four more schools are auditioning to join them, but there’s no guarantee all of them will make the cut.
The candidates: Incarnate Word, Abilene Christian, Texas-Pan American and New Orleans.
If you want big markets, Incarnate Word is located in San Antonio and New Orleans is located in a place that is self-explanatory. Adding Incarnate Word would allow the Southland Conference to stay in a market that was vacated when Texas-San Antonio decided to bolt.
After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans intended to slide to the NCAA's lower divisions, but never transitioned out of Division I status. Since leaving the Sun Belt Conference in June of 2010, the Privateers competed as a D-I independent.
In 2010-11, new student-athletes at New Orleans were non-scholarship as part of a plan to transition to Division III. Scholarships were reinstituted the following year as part of a planned move to Division II. And, in 2012-13, New Orleans will meet all D-I requirements and will field 14 sports (the NCAA minimum) for the first time since the aftermath of Katrina. Now the Privateers just need a new conference home.
Adding big markets may appeal to coaches because that could open up heavy-population recruiting territories that otherwise might not be available.
3, Can Dominique Morrison, the Summit League’s player of the year last season, play for pay?
Said Sutton, “Dominique will go on and hopefully will have an opportunity to play in the NBA. I think if the right situation comes up or comes around, he will have a chance. He can do one thing awfully well and that’s score the basketball. He can really shoot it. He has got good size and he just needs the right situation and for somebody to take a chance on him.”
4, Who left the men’s program to join the women’s program?
That would be Kyron Stokes. A former Golden Eagle player and graduate assistant for the men’s team, Stokes will join the women’s program in an administrative capacity. New coach Misti Cussen said the women will have a full-time director of basketball operations for the first time and the first person ever to hold the job will be Stokes.
5, What should the postscript be for last season’s ORU squad?
The Golden Eagles won 27 games and went 17-1 in league play, but lost in the Summit League semifinals and settled for an NIT trip.
“I think any time you coach a team, all you ask is for them to give everything they have and to maximize their abilities,” Sutton said.
“Last year’s team did that. It was a great ride. I don’t think I have had more fun coaching a team than I did last year because those guys were very, very unselfish. They just found ways to win games and to win 26 regular season games is amazing anywhere.”
Sutton said his father, Eddie, and brother, Sean, never won 25 regular season games at Oklahoma State even though the Cowboys made two Final Four trips during their time there.
“That’s how hard it is to win that many regular season games,” Scott Sutton said. “For last year’s team to do it when we were having to play on the road so much speaks volumes about the type of kids I was able to coach.”
Sutton said he was disappointed in how the season ended. He said one bad performance can wreck your dreams when you play in a one-bid league. But he said that “certainly didn’t take away from how I felt about that team.”
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