Men's Basketball 11/5/2007 7:00:00 PM UNCGSpartans.com

UNCG wraps up pre-season camp with exhibition against Greensboro

Greensboro at UNCG, 7 pm (exh.)

Entering the 2007-08 season, the pre-season prognosticators can't seem to agree on one particular involving UNCG.

Are the Spartans the hunter or the hunted?

With All-American candidate and reigning Southern Conference Player of the Year Kyle Hines returning as the centerpiece to head coach Mike Dement's Spartans, many have picked the Spartans to finish on top of the Southern Conference's North Division. However, the same experts wonder if they have what it takes to make the NCAA Tournament.

The Spartans made great strides in 2006-07. A season earlier, UNCG struggled through a 12-19 season when Hines had the numbers to earn SoCon Player of the Year honors as just a sophomore -- but no one would vote for a player who was on the team seeded No. 10 out of 11 in the conference tournament. The Spartans struggled away from Fleming Gym in 2005-06, going just 1-13 away from home.

Beginning the 2006-07 season in the midst of what would wind up as a 14-game road losing skid, the Spartans learned to win in unfriendly territory. The Spartans went 6-9 on the road last year, including a winning mark in Southern Conference play (5-4). Two of those losses came in overtime at Marshall and North Carolina State -- games that the Spartans were one play away from winning.

So it would seem that the 2007-08 Spartans are ready to embark on the next step -- becoming a consistent winner at home and on the road and take a crack at the Big Dance when March rolls around.

Hines has already reached many milestones and has more that he can achieve this year. Already the school's career blocks leader -- he did that as just a sophomore -- Hines will likely become the school's career scoring leader before the end of November. Then, two more big career milestones will be within his sites -- the school's career rebounding mark and, possibly, a shot at 2,000 career points and 1,000 career rebounds.

The All-America candidate from Sicklerville, NJ average 20.9 points and 9.0 rebounds last season -- one of five players in the nation to average 20 and 9 last year. He enters the season with the longest streak in the nation of double-digit scoring games with 50 in a row. His 31 career double-doubles are the most among active players and he is in the Top 5 among active players in career points, rebounds and blocks as the season begins.

But one the of Spartans stumbling blocks has been the lack of consistent outside shooting to take the pressure off Hines when he is constantly double and triple teamed. (Last year, even Duke double-teamed the 6-6 Hines with a pair of 7-footers.)

Some of that inconsistency seemed to clear last season with the emergence of Mikko Koivisto and Kendall Toney. The duo each knocked down 50 three-pointers last year. Toney, on easily the biggest stage of his career to date, knocked down eight of them in a January overtime loss at North Carolina State on ESPNU. He finished the season at a conference best 43.5 percent from behind the arc. Koivisto shot the trey at a 37.7 percent clip. The freshman pair grew up quickly last year and will be counted on this year to continue to spread the defense and open things up in the low post.

Senior guard Kevin Oleksiak will also be looked to for perimeter support. Last season, the Abington, PA native shot just 28 percent from three-point range. However, he has knocked down more than his share of treys over the last three years. He enters this season 10th all-time at UNCG in career three-point field goals with 98. As a sophomore, he set a school record with nine in a game.

Senior Dwayne Johnson returns for his third season as the Spartans' starting point guard. The 5-9 native of the Queens, NY enters his final college campaign with 299 career assists, sixth all-time at UNCG. He will try to become just the third player in school history to record 100 assists in three consecutive seasons. During his career, he already has 22 games in which he's recorded five or more assists. He can also take care of the basketball, witness the fact that he was third in the conference in assist-to-turnover ratio last season.

But Johnson has become more than just a distributor over the last two seasons. Last year, he knocked down 21-of-53 three-pointers, some of them at crucial points of a game.

Freshmen Daniel Oliver and Landon Clement will also see some time at either guard slot. Both averaged better than 20 points per contest in the senior seasons in high school, Oliver at Florida's Orlando Christian Prep and Clement at Sanderson HS in Raleigh, NC.

Sophomore forward Ben Stywall returns in the frontcourt. Stywall may have been the greatest benefactor of the opposition attention Hines got last season. The 6-5 Charlotte, NC native averaged 5.8 points and 6.5 rebounds per game last season. While Hines field goal percentage went down last year because of the double and triple teams, Stywall's offensive rebounding numbers climbed near the top of the conference. He enjoyed his best game of the year against Delaware when he had 23 points and 15 rebounds in a win over the Fightin' Blue Hens.

Dement hopes to be able to use Stywall more at his natural position of small forward if sophomore Pete Brown and some of the newcomers progress enough. Brown appeared in all 30 games last year as a reserve, spelling both Hines and Stywall. He played double-digit minutes in seven of those contests and will be counted on to play more this season.

Freshmen DeAngelo Jackson, Sam Mason and Darrius Sellers, as well as junior college transfer Michael Mitchell, will compete for time in Dement's rotation. Sellers, a 6-7 Smyrna, GA native, arrives at UNCG after a two-year stint at Charis Prep [NC] where he averaged 13 points and 12 rebounds last season. Jackson is a 6-8 athletic forward who moved to North Carolina from Washington state last year. In his only season at Harnett Central Prep, he averaged 12 points and nine rebounds a contest to earn a spot in the North Carolina East-West All-Star game.

Mitchell came to UNCG this past summer from Louisburg Junior College as a walk-on. A native of near-by Burlington, NC, the 6-7 Mitchell averaged 14 points and 7.7 rebounds per game last year. Mason, a Broughton HS product from Raleigh, NC, is a big body at 6-10. He averaged 14 points per contest as a senior, topping the 20-point mark six times last year.

The Spartans also welcome back walk-on Mike Hardiman. Hardiman joined the team in late November last season as a practice player after trying out for the team in early fall. The "neat" part of Hardiman's story is that he began the basketball season as a part of "The Ocho" a group of eight students who sat in the front row of UNCG athletic events with their chests painted. The native of Charlotte, NC went on to appear in three games last year with the Spartans, while the remaining members of "The Ocho" painted a manican with his uniform number on it to take his seat.

The Spartans will open the season on November 9 with a trip to Georgia Tech. The home portion of the campaign begins November 24 when UNCG hosts USC Upstate in the 200th men's basketball game played at Fleming Gym.

Print Friendly Version