KFDM COOP

Be nice now. Coaches read the site here.

Not a bad weekend. :shock:

Good point.

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Latest word was Conroe. Not sure on the day. I 'll know Saturday

Dynamo

:shock:

I would have McCarter closer to the top

He will be missed.

Heck of a player.

Believe so

:shock: My Gosh!

:shock: Dead Gum!

Attrition and addition are normal parts of Division I basketball programs BEAUMONT - One player leaves, another fills his spot. In the wild, often-unstable subculture of college athletics, sometimes the only constant thing is player movement. Graduations and dismissals beget new recruiting classes. If the coach is lucky, the new players are at least as good as the old ones, and if the coach is really lucky, the new guys are better. Such is the life of a coach, who learns he is only as good as his players - and, therefore, as good as his skills in evaluating talent and recruiting it. Steve Roccaforte is hoping those skills haven't left him. Lamar will likely sign three players during the NCAA's early signing period for basketball players, which began Wednesday, but the Cardinals could sign as many as four by the end of the year. The program has two seniors, Brandon Chappell and Dee Burchett, whose scholarships will open up once their eligibility expires. Lamar should have two more scholarships to give because two of this year's signees, Franklin Reed and Terrell Powell, left the team before its first exhibition game. Reed quit during preseason conditioning. Powell and Roccaforte came to a mutual decision for him to withdraw from the university and return home to Los Angeles. But three other players - senior Blake Whittle and sophomores Brandon McThay and Larry Handy - left before their eligibility expired, and they did so upon Roccaforte's wishes. "I'm not mad at them at all," Roccaforte said. "I told all our guys from Day 1 that there were certain things I wanted them to do. Maybe they didn't think I was serious or that it wasn't a big deal. I don't know; you'd have to ask them. But the bottom line is that the guys who did what I asked, they're here. The three guys who didn't do what I asked are not here." Player attrition is hardly rare when a new head coach takes over a program, since Division I scholarships are guaranteed only for one year, not for a four- or five-year period. Coaches can choose not to renew a player's scholarship for any reason - be it because the player did not perform as expected, because he didn't get along with teammates or simply because he wears the wrong socks to practice. Roccaforte, for his part, gave his reasons for cutting loose the three players last month. Roccaforte said that on the day he was hired, he told the returning players and their parents exactly what he expected of them. Among those requests, he said, was for all players to stay in Beaumont for one of the school's summer sessions and participate in Lamar's offseason conditioning program - a program that some returning players said was the most rigorous they've ever had. "Man, conditioning was not fun for anybody," sophomore Lawrence Nwevo said last month with a grin. Whittle, who averaged 8.1 points and 3.3 rebounds per game last season, said he asked Roccaforte if he could go home to Baton Rouge, La., where he would work for his father's business and follow his own workout program - a routine he said former Lamar coach Billy Tubbs allowed him to do. Whittle said the matter was still unresolved when he left town - but that two weeks later, he got a letter saying Roccaforte chose not to renew his scholarship. "I got a letter - about two weeks after the last day of school - I got a letter (from Roccaforte) saying he would not retain me on scholarship," Whittle said. "I enjoyed all three years there a lot. It was 10 times the experience I thought it was going to be. ... But that was it. Once I got that letter, that was that; I wasn't coming back to play at Lamar." McThay, a native of Deerfield Beach, Fla., averaged 4.5 points and 11.3 minutes on last year's team. Handy, a Houston native, played in just three games. Both players have turned up at Kilgore College, where an attempt to reach them was unsuccessful. Roccaforte declined to say why exactly McThay and Handy transferred, but added that he helped place them both at Kilgore under coach Scott Schumacher - someone Roccaforte has known for almost two decades. "Again, I have to do what's best for my team," Roccaforte said. "For the guys that did everything I asked them to do, it's not fair to them if I hold those guys to a different standard. If I allow one guy to get away with something, why is that fair to the other guy who did all those things and didn't complain about them?" As it stands, Lamar will begin its first season under Roccaforte at 7 p.m. Saturday against Texas Southern in the Montagne Center. The Cardinals will dress eight newcomers, most of whom began practicing full-time together just last month. Roccaforte's advice to the fans? Patience, please. Lamar may have dropped its first exhibition on Nov. 1, but his team showed improvement in a 74-63 victory over Central Oklahoma on Tuesday night. "The one thing that I do know about these guys (is) that they're hard-working guys and they want to win," Roccaforte said after the exhibition. "That's good. That's not bad, that's good. They really care about what's going on. If people can just be patient, I think in the end, people are going to be real happy with what they see."

In hockey, fighting is an apropros part of the game BEAUMONT - Texas Wildcatters forward Casey Lee used the most direct way for a hockey player to send a message 59 seconds into the team's first home game, nearly two weeks ago. Lee, a 6-foot-1, 190-pound 21-year-old, did it in the form of a punch to the face of Pensacola Ice Pilots forward Dan Sullivan - an inch taller and 35 pounds heavier than the Wildcatters' rookie. Both players had flipped off helmets, thrown down gloves and circled each other with fists raised to about eye level. The players scuffled for less than a minute, and both landed quality blows to the head, stomach and sides. Once they were done, each was escorted by a game official to the penalty box, where they sat as five minutes ticked off the clock. "I wanted them to know that we're the Texas Wildcatters and we're not going to be intimidated by anybody," said Lee, recruited to the Wildcatters after playing five seasons of junior hockey in Canada. Most hockey teams have a "tough guy," someone who is not afraid to exchange blows with someone on the other team. Wildcatters coach Malcolm Cameron said not all teams have players who are expected to mix it up, "but certainly the successful ones have a guy like that," he said. Lee was involved in another scuffle Saturday against the Gwinnett Gladiators, the team Texas will face in a pair of games Friday and Saturday at Ford Arena. "Usually when we fight, there's a reason for it," said Lee, whose fight Saturday was against Jon Awe. Fighting in hockey might be similar to a baseball pitcher drilling a batter in the ribs or a strong safety telling a wide receiver to think twice about coming across the middle of a football field in the form of a punishing hit. Actions such as those might be frowned upon by some as barbaric or uncivilized. To players, fighting, inside pitches and hard hits are ways by which justice and order are kept on the playing surface. "It's part of the game," Wildcatters forward Kevin Baker said. "It's strategic. Sometimes it's used to gain momentum. If a team's really hounding you in your end and you can't get anything going, (a fight) kind of breaks it up and stops them." Fighting players drop their gloves and circle each other. Once they get locked up with each other, each will often try to pull the other player's sweater over his head to get in a final round of shots. Referees usually never interfere with a fight until one player has fallen. Lee said he didn't necessarily seek out Sullivan within the first minute of that game Oct. 28, but Lee said he had determined beforehand that he wouldn't back down from the fifth-year professional. On the stat sheet, penalty minutes read as PIM, as in "penalties in minutes." Lee said he read Sullivan's statistics before the game. "I saw his stats from last year and that he had over 200 PIMs or whatever," said Lee, who saw teammate Riley Emmerson fight Sullivan one night earlier during a game in Pensacola. "In the game before, in Pensacola, I thought (Sullivan) was kind of trying to intimidate us." Cameron said he was impressed that Lee - a rookie - stood up to Sullivan, who Cameron regarded "as tough guy in our league for the last four years." Sullivan was one of 18 players to register 200 or more penalty minutes last season. He had 203 and is on pace to surpass that by a wide margin. Sullivan has 41 penalty minutes - fourth most in the league - through nine games, which puts him on pace for 328. The league-leading total last season was 344, set by Utah's Brad Herauf. The record is 512, set by Rob McCaig of Louisiana in the 1995-96 season. Lee has 20 penalty minutes, which is not enough to register among the top 50 in the league, and he is not the team's only fighter. Jason Beeman had the team's first fight this season when he exchanged a few blows Oct. 21 with Florida's Bill Kinkel. Emmerson strikes an imposing presence at 6-foot-8 and 248 pounds. He fought Pensacola's Mario Joly two seconds after Lee fought Sullivan. The two fights brought many in the crowd at Ford Arena to their feet as they cheered. "You're trying to get your home team and your home crowd into the game and as loud as it can, and (fighting is) a good way to do it," Baker said. "It gets the team up and gets them going and gets them ready for the game." Intimidators Seven games into the season, three players have stood out as those to watch for if you're looking to see a fight. Here is a list of those players and a summary about what Wildcatters coach Malcolm Cameron said about them: Casey Lee 6-foot-1, 190 pounds Mixed it up during the team's home opener Oct. 28 and with Gwinnett's Jon Awe in the second period Saturday. What the coach says: "Casey is exactly what I knew he'd be. He's got great hands for a big guy. He can scrap, he can hit. He's going to have a great season." Riley Emmerson 6-foot-8, 248 pounds Fought twice Oct. 27 at Pensacola and once more the next night, during the team's home opener. What the coach says: "Riley is the type of guy who doesn't put cheap shots against the type of player who doesn't battle back against him. He's an honest player. He'll fight the guys that are his size. We won't go out there and pick on little guys." Jason Beeman 5-foot-11, 213 pounds Got into a fight with Florida's Bill Kinkel, who played the last two seasons with the Houston Aeros, in the season-opening two-game series against the Everblades. What the coach says: "He's going to have a lot of (fights) this year because he's a real aggravating player to play against. That's why I brought him here. He hits everything that moves. He's a trash-talker. ... He's kinetic energy out there on the ice."

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Dang i saw some big rain totals pretty far north. Did see on the SETX outdoors report Rayburn was close to normal.

After all that heavy rain up north the last 2 weeks the lakes are still low? :shock:

Sounds like a great event.

They can get healed up and go scout.

Thanks.

Hunter: labor union may take action on techs ruleAssociated Press NEW YORK -- Now, NBA players are fed up with what's happening after the whistle. With technical foul calls nearly doubled compared to the same point last season, union director Billy Hunter wants commissioner David Stern to lighten up on the NBA's crackdown on complaining -- or he might even seek legal action against the league. Players are fined for every technical foul they receive, and there were 122 of them called through the first 51 games of the season, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. There were 66 through 50 games last season. "You say you want to deter it, curtail that kind of conduct on the court and now it's kind of dipped down so the slightest little inclination ... a guy throws his hands up, the refs are now calling a tech," Hunter said. "So I really think it's incumbent upon the commissioner to kind of tell the referees, instruct them they got to back off a little bit." And if he doesn't? "I think what may ultimately happen if it continues to occur is we will probably be compelled to bring an unfair labor practice action or something," Hunter told The Associated Press. "Try to seek some relief, at least to have the issue either heard or at least elevated so that it gets a lot more public attention than it's currently getting." It has received plenty already. It had to share the spotlight with the controversy over the new game ball during the preseason, but the issue moved to the front once the real games started and teams began realizing the impact it was having on them. Denver and Sacramento lost their leading scorers when Carmelo Anthony and Mike Bibby were ejected from their season openers. Rasheed Wallace wasted no time getting tossed, but even well-mannered players such as Dwyane Wade and Tim Duncan have been hit with technicals along the way, as has Kobe Bryant. So much for special treatment for the superstars, which is the way the league planned it. "What the referees were instructed to do was apply the rule across the board without regard to individual players," executive vice president of operations Stu Jackson said. "They're instructed to apply the rule fairly with all players and call what they see." The NBA made the post-whistle actions a point of emphasis when Stern grew tired of watching players overreact, verbally and physically, after calls went against them. It's been called a "zero-tolerance" policy, which the league objects to. But that's exactly the way it feels to many players. "It's crazy because guys are so passionate about the game," Hornets guard Chris Paul said. "I know myself, it's not that you're always trying to show the ref up, it's just your emotions. You're playing a game that you love and at times you may express it different ways." And it's more than just allowing a free point on a foul shot that bothers the players. A technical also hits them in the wallet: Players are fined $1,000 for each of their first five technicals, an amount that increases by $500 for each five after that, capped by a $2,500 penalty for each one starting with the 16th. A one-game suspension also comes at that point and for every other technical thereafter. "We talk to the ballplayers, we kind of empathize with them," Hunter said. "We understand the circumstances, understand how they feel, how they feel it negatively impacts their game." Coaches have said they are OK with the policy as long as officials show good judgment and are consistent. Players worry about getting whistled for a natural reflex in a key situation. "It's kind of hard to keep your emotions down when you play a game like basketball and keep them totally wrapped up," Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said. "Too many referees have rabbit ears and very thin skin. And until they realize that they're not perfect, they can't expect the players to be perfect. There has to be some kind of give-and-take there." Jackson said there is, as long as players don't overdo it. When Duncan began yelling about a clearly incorrect call that went against him Monday night in New York, the official didn't respond right away. It wasn't until Duncan kept up the argument on the next trip that the technical finally came. "This is not a zero-tolerance policy. If a player doesn't act inappropriately or make disrespectful statements on a call or a non-call, such as yelling or cursing or inappropriate physical reactions or gestures like flailing their arms, without that we'll allow players a heat of the moment reaction," Jackson said. "But when those reactions or those comments become continuous, then you're subject to receiving a technical foul." Another complaint from the players is that they lost the right to have dialogue with the referees. Officials have always been able to interact with the players as they please, and what may be a technical from one may not even warrant a reaction from another. "If you're in the league for a long time, you develop relationships with certain officials," Bryant said. "In fact, some officials I've known even since high school, because some of the officials are from the Philadelphia area." Jackson said the league has heard only a few complaints from players, but Hunter said he has received plenty of calls. He may be placing one of his own soon to Stern. "My staff is talking regularly back and forth with his staff," Hunter said. "If we think they're not being sensitive at all, it usually requires a session between myself and David. We haven't had it yet, but the way things are going, I'm sure I'll be calling him in the immediate future." Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press

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