Iowa first stop for Jags

 
Picked to finish second in the Southwestern Athletic Conference, Southern’s men’s Basketball team will open up the 2012 season traveling to Ames, Iowa, to face the Iowa State Cyclones Friday at 7 p.m.
The Jaguars are coming off a surprising 17-14 record that propelled the Jaguars to a first place finish in the western division and are only returning four players from last year’s squad.
But that was last year, and Southern will not surprise anyone this upcoming season including Iowa State and their head coach Fred Hoiberg.
“I’m expecting a great challenge, those guards are really good. One of them scores the heck out of it and that point guard is extremely solid and pressures well defensively,” Hoiberg said during a Cyclones TV press conference.
The guards that Hoiberg was talking about were seniors Jameel Grace and Derick Beltran. Both were responsible for over half of SU’s points last year.
Grace is the most experienced player on the team putting in four years and Beltran is next in line with two years of experience.
Grace feels that the road games will be very important for the team.
“This road trip will be a good test for us,” Grace said. “We have to start somewhere so why not start at a so called big stage and I feel that coach Banks and his staff will get us ready and prepared.”
Iowa State is very familiar with the SWAC. The Cyclones escaped a major upset last season squeaking by with the victory over Mississippi Valley State 67-65, and the Delta Devils went on to win the SWAC conference.
That doesn’t mean that Iowa State is a push over, the Cyclones had a 23-11 record last season making their first NCAA Tournament appearance in seven years.
Iowa State also has a perfect 18-0 record against the other SWAC schools in their entire history, and this isn’t the first time these two teams have met. In 2000, the Jaguars faced the Cyclones and fell 94-62.
The Jaguars bring in seven new faces, replacing an accumulation of seniors and transfers. With the new players, although talented, the reinvented team will encounter growing pains.
“They are coming along each and every day. The longer we are in practice, the more time they have to get to know the things that we’re doing as far as a team and what coach wants us to run,” Grace said.
Head coach Roman Banks said in a press conference Wednesday that he is interested in seeing his players perform under the lights Friday.
There’s a lot of inexperience out there on the court, said Banks. “I feel that if we can be a consistent unit every day and that we will have a chance to win some ball games and compete to the end.”
The Jaguars will have a 10-day road trip traveling. They will be playing teams like Nebraska in Lincoln, and then traveling to Laramie, Wyo., to partake in the Global Sports Hoops Showcase at Wyoming and then finishing their road trip in New Orleans to face Tulane.
“It will be a great experience for us, it’s going to prepare us for conference play,” Banks said. “I hope to go in and win basketball games and try to get better as a team.”