John Shulman joked that he’s petitioning the NCAA to let his players wear sticky gloves during basketball games like NFL wide receivers.
“Maybe even like a Fred Biletnikoff with the Stickum,” the Mocs basketball coach said. “He’d just drip his hands in that sticky stuff.”
Rebounding, grabbing the ball, is a serious matter for the Mocs — no joke.
“I haven’t been real pleased, and I think we’re average at boxing-out and average at getting the ball,” said Shulman, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga coach. “It’s a mystery right now. We have to find somebody who can rebound the ball.”
The Mocs (9-6, 1-1 SoCon) have an opportunity to find out if there has been some improvement tonight at 7 p.m. against UNC Greensboro (3-12, 2-2) in McKenzie Arena.
“We’ll have to get a rebounding edge and dominate and make it known that we are a great rebounding team,” center DeAntre Jefferson said. “We have people who can go get the ball, we need to show it in a game. We have size and people with the will and drive to get the ball.”
Junior college transfer Ridge McKeither leads the Mocs with an average of 5.8 rebounds per game. At one point earlier this season, he ranked among the top five in the Southern Conference.
When McKeither left for the holiday break, he was the Mocs’ starting power forward. On Christmas Eve his step-father passed away and McKeither missed practices and the Dr Pepper Classic.
With his return, Sam Watson had the starting job, Chris Early worked himself back into shape, and Jeff Smith stole minutes from McKeither at Georgia Southern.
“You forget some of the small things when you take that much time off,” McKeither said. “I have to come back and do what I was doing in the beginning and dominating my position. I have to show rebounding in practice so coach will have confidence in me during the game.”
The Mocs’ next game is not a gimme despite UNCG’s unflattering 3-12 overall record.
The Spartans have been an unofficial member of the Atlantic Coast Conference so far this season. They have played six ACC schools — four in the Greensboro Coliseum which is their new permanent home this year.
“You can’t go off their record because they’ve played an unrealistic schedule and they’ve played some of those ACC schools really good,” Shulman said. “If anybody in our league played what they did, they’d have a bad record too.”
Yet UNCG is 2-2 in the SoCon with a 33-point win at Samford on Dec., 5 and a 10-point win over Furman on Saturday.
“There’s a fine line between how well you prepare against those high-level teams and how much confidence you lose to those teams,” UNCG coach Mike Dement said earlier this week. “It remains to be seen how our guys handle it.”