Viking Transfers Have Led Team To A 6-1 Start
http://www.goviks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?temp_site=NO&DB_OEM_ID=19300&ATCLID=3630343
When former Oregon high school basketball stars Dominic Waters and Phil Nelson decided to return to their home state and Californian Jamie Jones decided he wanted to stay in Portland after leaving the University of Portland program, they had expected and unexpected impacts on the Viking Men’s basketball program.
“It’s not unusual for us to get calls from players wanting to transfer and it’s not unusual for Division I basketball players to move around. But to get three transfers of this quality in one group is unusual,” said PSU Head Men’s Basketball Coach Ken Bone, taking stock of an early season record that included only one loss in seven outings.
With point guard Jeremiah Dominguez struggling early in the season with a finger injury, the trio of transfers has joined returning forward Kyle Coston to lead Viking scoring. Nelson (6’7” forward from the University of Washington) was averaging 11.0 points per game in early December, Jones (6’7” forward) was second at 11.9 ppg, Waters (6’1” guard from University of Hawai’i) was on top at 12.6 despite starting just one game.
Three returning starters average in double figures as well with Murray at 10.7 ppg, Coston at 10.4 ppg, and Dominguez at 10.2 ppg.
“Our transfers have definitely had a large impact,” said Bone, especially big with Dominguez, leading scorer from the first two games and last year’s Big Sky Conference (BSC) Player of the Year, out for a couple of games.
“Jeremiah had two great games to start the season, then has two points, three points and two points in Alaska (before the bone chip was diagnosed). That’s not the Jeremiah we know,” Bone said.
Jones and Waters had big games to start the year while it took Nelson a couple of games “to understand his role. But, he averaged nearly 19 points in the last three games, so he’s obviously found his niche,” Bone said.
Having lost seven letterwinners from last year’s Big Sky Conference Champion team, it was important that Jones, Waters and Nelson were able to step in and play immediately. Bone said, “I was particularly excited about those transfers, because I felt they could have an immediate impact.”
Bone also credited the trio with doing a nice job of blending on and off the court. He called them “solid kids who understand the team. They understand what’s expected and what’s not expected, what’s acceptable and not acceptable.”
Along with Dominguez, also a transfer from the University of Portland, the have put the PSU coaching staff in the position of being picky when it comes to players looking to transfer... that was the unexpected dividend.
There’s a lot of movement among college basketball players, said Bone. Since earning their first NCAA tournament appearance, the phone lines have heated up with players interested in the PSU program.
“Because we have such depth and because our transfers are such high quality players, we’re in a position to be pretty picky about who we take,” Bone said, pointing to a recent call from “a pretty decent player” in a larger program who was gently turned away because PSU has good talent and good depth at his position.
On balance, Bone would prefer to stock his program with recruits out of high school, but in Jones, Waters and Nelson, “we got three players who were better than the high school kids we were looking at.”
In the early going of this edition of Viking men’s basketball, Bone proclaimed himself “very satisfied. Things are going very well. If they were going great, we’d be 7-0,” adding that the loss to Hampton in the Alaska Shootout was a “wake-up call, because we felt we were a little better team than they are.”
PSU has good firepower on the offensive end this year, especially for this early in the season. The team isn’t bad on defense, but Bone said he definitely misses sophomore guard Paul Guede. A 6’5” transfer from Tallahassee Community College, Guede is out indefinitely with a broken bone in his left foot.
Guede can “pick up the slack on either end. He can defend three positions. He’d be playing 20 minutes a game if he were healthy,” Bone said.
Even with their fast start, Bone said the Vikings need to improve if they’re going to successfully defend their BSC regular season and tournament titles and make another appearance in the NCAA national tournament.
“We know we need to get better. I think everyone knows the system and how we want to play. It’s a matter of doing the little things right, just a matter of going out and doing it,” said Bone.
With games against Pac-10 Washington, and nationally-ranked Gonzaga and Baylor coming up, are Bone and his staff pointing to any one game?
“We know our path back to the tournament leads through our conference, so we’re really focused on accomplishing that goal.”
Conference play begins early this year with a Dec. 20 home match against Montana, picked number two behind the Vikings in the Big Sky this year.
And while Bone is relatively pleased with his team’s progress to date, he said it never seems to be as good as it should be.
“At this point, we’re 6-1, so we have to be doing some good things. But we need to get better if we’re going to repeat what we did last year.”
Even so, it’s been a good start to the 2008-2009 season, at least in part because of the play Jones, Waters and Nelson, who are meeting and, perhaps, even exceeding the high expectations PSU’s coaching staff had for them.
http://www.goviks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?temp_site=NO&DB_OEM_ID=19300&ATCLID=3630343
When former Oregon high school basketball stars Dominic Waters and Phil Nelson decided to return to their home state and Californian Jamie Jones decided he wanted to stay in Portland after leaving the University of Portland program, they had expected and unexpected impacts on the Viking Men’s basketball program.
“It’s not unusual for us to get calls from players wanting to transfer and it’s not unusual for Division I basketball players to move around. But to get three transfers of this quality in one group is unusual,” said PSU Head Men’s Basketball Coach Ken Bone, taking stock of an early season record that included only one loss in seven outings.
With point guard Jeremiah Dominguez struggling early in the season with a finger injury, the trio of transfers has joined returning forward Kyle Coston to lead Viking scoring. Nelson (6’7” forward from the University of Washington) was averaging 11.0 points per game in early December, Jones (6’7” forward) was second at 11.9 ppg, Waters (6’1” guard from University of Hawai’i) was on top at 12.6 despite starting just one game.
Three returning starters average in double figures as well with Murray at 10.7 ppg, Coston at 10.4 ppg, and Dominguez at 10.2 ppg.
“Our transfers have definitely had a large impact,” said Bone, especially big with Dominguez, leading scorer from the first two games and last year’s Big Sky Conference (BSC) Player of the Year, out for a couple of games.
“Jeremiah had two great games to start the season, then has two points, three points and two points in Alaska (before the bone chip was diagnosed). That’s not the Jeremiah we know,” Bone said.
Jones and Waters had big games to start the year while it took Nelson a couple of games “to understand his role. But, he averaged nearly 19 points in the last three games, so he’s obviously found his niche,” Bone said.
Having lost seven letterwinners from last year’s Big Sky Conference Champion team, it was important that Jones, Waters and Nelson were able to step in and play immediately. Bone said, “I was particularly excited about those transfers, because I felt they could have an immediate impact.”
Bone also credited the trio with doing a nice job of blending on and off the court. He called them “solid kids who understand the team. They understand what’s expected and what’s not expected, what’s acceptable and not acceptable.”
Along with Dominguez, also a transfer from the University of Portland, the have put the PSU coaching staff in the position of being picky when it comes to players looking to transfer... that was the unexpected dividend.
There’s a lot of movement among college basketball players, said Bone. Since earning their first NCAA tournament appearance, the phone lines have heated up with players interested in the PSU program.
“Because we have such depth and because our transfers are such high quality players, we’re in a position to be pretty picky about who we take,” Bone said, pointing to a recent call from “a pretty decent player” in a larger program who was gently turned away because PSU has good talent and good depth at his position.
On balance, Bone would prefer to stock his program with recruits out of high school, but in Jones, Waters and Nelson, “we got three players who were better than the high school kids we were looking at.”
In the early going of this edition of Viking men’s basketball, Bone proclaimed himself “very satisfied. Things are going very well. If they were going great, we’d be 7-0,” adding that the loss to Hampton in the Alaska Shootout was a “wake-up call, because we felt we were a little better team than they are.”
PSU has good firepower on the offensive end this year, especially for this early in the season. The team isn’t bad on defense, but Bone said he definitely misses sophomore guard Paul Guede. A 6’5” transfer from Tallahassee Community College, Guede is out indefinitely with a broken bone in his left foot.
Guede can “pick up the slack on either end. He can defend three positions. He’d be playing 20 minutes a game if he were healthy,” Bone said.
Even with their fast start, Bone said the Vikings need to improve if they’re going to successfully defend their BSC regular season and tournament titles and make another appearance in the NCAA national tournament.
“We know we need to get better. I think everyone knows the system and how we want to play. It’s a matter of doing the little things right, just a matter of going out and doing it,” said Bone.
With games against Pac-10 Washington, and nationally-ranked Gonzaga and Baylor coming up, are Bone and his staff pointing to any one game?
“We know our path back to the tournament leads through our conference, so we’re really focused on accomplishing that goal.”
Conference play begins early this year with a Dec. 20 home match against Montana, picked number two behind the Vikings in the Big Sky this year.
And while Bone is relatively pleased with his team’s progress to date, he said it never seems to be as good as it should be.
“At this point, we’re 6-1, so we have to be doing some good things. But we need to get better if we’re going to repeat what we did last year.”
Even so, it’s been a good start to the 2008-2009 season, at least in part because of the play Jones, Waters and Nelson, who are meeting and, perhaps, even exceeding the high expectations PSU’s coaching staff had for them.
