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Vikings Host George Mason To Tip Off Season
Nov. 8, 2006 Contact: Brian McCann
Complete Release in PDF Format
GAME 1 CSU single game & season tickets are currently available by calling the Wolstein Center Ticket Office at (216) 687-4848 or by contacting Ticketmaster. SETTING THE SCENE: Cleveland State officially opens the Gary Waters coaching era when the Vikings host 2006 NCAA Final Four participant George Mason on Saturday, Nov. 11 beginning at 3:00 p.m. in the Wolstein Center. The game will mark the first time that CSU will host a Final Four team from the previous season. George Mason enters the season unranked after making one of the most prolific tournament runs in NCAA history a year ago. The Patriots bring back two starters and nine lettermen from the squad that went 27-8, beating Michigan State, North Carolina, Wichita State and Connecticut in the NCAA Tournament before falling in the national semi-final to eventual champion Florida. Cleveland State returns four starters and nine lettermen off last year's team that posted a 10-18 record, but Waters has brought in a four-player recruiting class who should each have an impact on the squad this season. The Vikings played well in a 72-51 exhibition win over Slippery Rock on Tuesday. PREVIEWING CLEVELAND STATE: The Vikings enter their season opener with a totally blank slate as first-year head coach Gary Waters has made few decisions regarding the playing rotation for Saturday's opener against George Mason or which of the 13 players will or will not play this year. One thing that is certain is that with no true centers on the roster, the Viking rotation will consist of three guards and two forwards. The senior quartet of guards Carlos English (8.1 ppg, 4.7 apg), Victor Morris (6.6 ppg) and Raheem Moss (10.0 ppg) and forward Patrick Tatham (7.6 ppg, 6.0 rpg) will be joined by sophomore forward J'Nathan Bullock (11.3 ppg, 4.5 rpg) and junior forward Luke Murphy (2.5, 2.0) to form the nucleus of the playing rotation. Four newcomers may factor into the rotation, guards Joe Davis and Breyohn Watson and forwards Kevin Francis and Tristan Crawford, with returners Renard Fields (1.3, 1.3) and Bahaadar Russell (0.8, 0.7) each seeking to improve their playing time from a year ago. HEAD COACH Gary Waters: A 32-year collegiate coaching veteran, Gary Waters took over as the head coach of the Vikings in the spring of 2006, bringing with him to Cleveland a head coaching history that included six trips to the postseason in his first 10 years as a head coach. He posted a 92-60 record in five seasons at Kent State, making NCAA appearances in both 1998-99 and 2000-01 and becoming the third coach in Mid-American Conference history to be named league coach of the year in successive years. Waters moved to Rutgers in 2001-02, compiling a 79-75 mark in five seasons, including three trips to the NIT. FOR OPENERS: Saturday's season opener marks the beginning of the 76th season of men's basketball at Cleveland State. The Vikings are:
• 26-49 in the 75 previous season openers TEACHING SUCCESS: Gary Waters taught the Vikings what it takes to achieve success by turning professor for a weekly "Success" class during the summer and preseason. The class, which uses legendary UCLA head coach John Wooden's book which outlined the Pyramid of Success, was held twice each week during the first summer school session and every Wednesday afternoon once school resumed in late August. The class has been a success as the Viking players have used Wooden's pyramid principles to define the items that they need for success, using them to build their own pyramid. SCHEDULING DONE OVER A GAME OF CHESS: An interesting side note to Saturday's game against George Mason is how it came about. After Gary Waters was named as the head coach of the Vikings in April, he had only a handful of games to schedule for the upcoming season but did not have a prominent opponent set for the home schedule. During a NIKE coaches trip to Hawaii during the summer, Waters spent an afternoon playing chess with George Mason head coach Jim Larranaga, whom Waters knew from his time at Kent State and Eastern Michigan (when Larranaga was at Bowling Green). During the game, the duo talked about George Mason's struggle to schedule games following its NCAA Tournament run last year. By the end of the session, a two-game agreement had been hashed out with CSU returning the game early next season. For the record, Larranaga won the match but Waters got the first home game. THE VIKING BASKETBALL REPORT DEBUTS NOV. 15: A new addition to the television lineup this year is The Viking Basketball Report, a weekly half-hour show that will include game recaps, highlights and features on players and other elements of the program. The first episode of the show will air on Wednesday, Nov. 15 at 9:00 p.m. and Thursday, Nov. 16 at 10:30 p.m. It will be hosted by Mike Cairns with commentary from head coach Gary Waters. A BUSY NOVEMBER: The Vikings will open the 2006-07 season by playing a school-record eight games during the month of November, a staggering total considering that they will be played over a 19-day period. The total shatters the previous school standard of five games in November set in both 2000-01 and 2002-03. By comparison, CSU will play eight games during the 31 days in January and seven in December. . . . AND A BUSY YEAR: The Vikings are assured of playing at least 31 games this year, a figure surpassed just three times in CSU basketball history. The school record for games played in a season is 33, which was set in both 1985-86 and 1986-87. Most recently, the Vikings played 32 games in 2000-01. CSU will play 30 regular season contests this year and at least one game in the Horizon League Championship. SOMETHING MUST BE WRONG WITH THE NUMBER THREE: For the second straight season, the Vikings will be starting a player sporting a different uniform number from the season before as senior guard Carlos English has ditched the No. 3 that he used during his junior campaign in favor of wearing No. 1 this season. Something must be wrong with the No. 3 jersey as it was just a year ago that Victor Morris, who wore it as a freshman and sophomore, switched to No. 5. No word yet from sophomore Tristan Crawford, who inherited No. 3 this year, on whether or not he will keep it. FROM BALL BOY TO RESERVE GUARD: Although Tuesday night's exhibition game against Slippery Rock was the first time that Viking freshman guard Joe Davis played a game in the Wolstein Center, it wasn't the first time that he was on the court during a CSU contest. Davis, who hails from nearby Warrensville Heights, served as a ball boy on several occasions during the 1995-96 and 1996-97 seasons. BULLOCK NAMED TO ALL-HORIZON SQUAD: Sophomore forward J'Nathan Bullock, who became just the fifth freshman in program history to lead the team in scoring, has been named to the 2006 Preseason All-Horizon League second team. Bullock, a 6-5, 240-pound forward from Flint, Mich., started 22 of the 28 games that he played in a year ago, averaging 11.3 points and 4.5 rebounds a game. He recorded 17 double-figure scoring games, including three double-doubles, and set a CSU freshman record with 20 free throw attempts against Kent State. BULLOCK RECEIVES AVIS SCHOLARSHIP: Sophomore J'Nathan Bullock is the 2006-07 recipient of the Danferd C. Avis Endowed Basketball Scholarship, the first fully endowed scholarship for basketball at CSU. The scholarship is named in honor of Dan Avis, a member of the men's basketball team from 1947-50, who has been involved in Viking athletics for more than 50 years. A captain on the Fenn College teams in each of his last three years, Avis was inducted in the CSU Athletic Hall of Fame in 1980 and remains active with the Varsity "C" Club. MCLENDON SCHOLARSHIP SERIES SET: The Cleveland State John McLendon Scholarship Series, an annual men's basketball game hosted by CSU in conjunction with the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA), will debut when the Vikings host Ohio State at Quicken Loans Arena on Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2007. Proceeds from the event will help to endow an athletic scholarship in the name of John McLendon at Cleveland State, the Basketball Hall of Fame coach who was head coach at CSU from 1966-69. VIKINGS ON TV AT LEAST SEVEN TIMES IN 2006-07: At least seven Cleveland State games will be televised this year, five of which are part of a new broadcast partnership between CSU and first-year sports cable channel SportsTime Ohio, the television home of the Cleveland Indians. The CSU road games at Kansas State (Dec. 5) and Ohio State (Dec. 9) will be shown on Fox Sports Midwest and ESPN+, respectively. Additionally, the Feb. 17 Bracket Buster game could be televised on any one of four ESPN channels and the semi-final and finals of the league championship will also be broadcast nationally. THE FINAL FOUR APPEARS IN CLEVELAND: The Final Four will be represented in Cleveland at both the start and end of the season. George Mason, which was the Cinderella team of last year's NCAA Tournament when it advanced to the Final Four, opens the season at the Wolstein Center against the Vikings on Saturday (Nov. 11). It is the first time that a Final Four team from the season before will play at CSU. The end of the year will find CSU, working in conjunction with the Mid-American Conference and the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission, serving as the host of the NCAA Women's Basketball Final Four. The games, which will be held on April 1 & 3, 2007 at the Quicken Loans Arena, mark the first time that Cleveland will host either Final Four. COMMUNICATION STUDENTS ARE HANDS ON: When a student enrolls in classes in the CSU School of Communication, odds are that they will be involved in several projects that the school works with the athletic department on. After all, it was communication students who did the bulk of the work to make video streaming of men's and women's basketball home games possible last year. This year, they will help to produce The Vikings Basketball Report, a weekly 30-minute show on SportsTime Ohio that will include men's basketball highlights and features. In addition, one class in the school is doing features of student-athletes in all 17 CSU sport as part of a class project with those vignettes being made available to Viking fans online. VIKINGS ARE GETTING STRONGER: Shortly after taking over as head coach, Gary Waters told a media member that a successful program usually has 7-8 players capable of bench pressing 300 pounds or more, a figure that no Viking had accomplished during the spring period. Waters then challenged strength coach Shane Levenson and the Vikings to significantly improve their performance, giving each a target number to reach before the start of the regular season. The results were overwhelming as all 16 players hit their target by the start of preseason practice with six players hitting the 300-pound mark. J'Nathan Bullock leads the way with a 340-pound bench press, a 720-pound leg press and a 490-pound squat. The other Vikings to reach 300 pounds were Raheem Moss (320), Carlos English (300), Cedric Jackson (300), Victor Morris (300) and Patrick Tatham (300). WAITING IN THE WINGS: CSU fans may have to wait until next fall to see the true strength of the Viking recruiting class as three of the seven newcomers are transfers from other Division I schools and will have to sit out the 2006-07 season to meet NCAA transfer guidelines. The trio -- each of whom are juniors and will have two years of eligibility remaining -- include guard Cedric Jackson and forwards Chris Moore and George Tandy. Jackson is the most experienced of the group, starting 35 games the last two years at Big East Conference member St. John's, while Tandy, a native of Indianapolis who played his senior year of high school at Cleveland's Lincoln West High, was named the Ohio Valley Conference Freshman of the Year in 2004-05 while playing at Eastern Illinois. Moore, who lives in Lakewood and attended St. Edward High, returns home after playing two seasons at UC Santa Barbara. NEXT UP: The Vikings remain at home to close the modest two-game homestand to open the 2006-07 season when CSU hosts Notre Dame College on Monday, Nov. 13 beginning at 7:00 p.m. in the Wolstein Center.
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