Photo by Ezra Romero / The Collegian
It has been just more than five months since head basketball coach Rodney Terry was hired to resurrect a program that has only been to one postseason tournament in the last five years.
Since day one of inheriting the program there have been major changes to the implemented. The most notable changes have been to the roster where key cogs from last year’s team have departed from the program.
The players that have left the program for their respective reasons are Greg Smith, Tim Steed, Bracken Funk, Givon Crump, Bennie Rhodes and John Ryan. Nedeljko Golubovic was lost due to graduation.
Now, with all of these players moving on from the program, Terry has restocked his team with new names and faces to fill the holes.
“We have a class of three junior college players and one high school kid,” Terry said. “Kevin Foster is a 6-foot-7 kid who has a chance to be a really good player. Also, have a kid named Larry McGaughey who is coming in from Lawson State Community College. Another junior college kid who was an All-American has a chance to be a contributor for us as well. Daquan Brown is 6-foot-10 and coming in from Barstow College. We lost a lot of size from last year’s team. So he gives us a little bit of length and hopefully he can bring some things to the table skill wise. Our high school kid Julius Bilbrew from Inglewood High School is a combo guard who we hope can bring a spark in terms of ball handling and other duties out on the perimeter.”
One player who Terry didn’t address is Grant Hefeng. Hefeng is a 6-foot-8 power forward who is the first Chinese player to play college basketball without going to prep school first. Also, he competed on the Chinese National Team as one of the top players under the age of 20. Hefeng’s addition is significant because at Texas, Terry was the main recruiter known for bringing in some of the top Canadian recruits.
Now, the former Texas assistant may have started an official destination spot for Chinese recruits.
“We’d like to think so,” Terry said. “Grant’s always dreamed of playing college basketball. He’s come up through the ranks in terms of the national team over there. He’s had some opportunities to go professional over there but chose to go the college route. The country of China loves basketball so it could be a great niche for us.”
Hefeng and all the other recruits bring some new faces to the program to go along with a retooled coaching staff. The staff includes Jerry Wainwright, Michael Schwartz and Byron Jones. Terry worked under Wainwright while Wainwright was the head coach at UNC- Wilmington. He also worked with Schwartz at Texas where they were both assistants under current Longhorn head coach Rick Barnes.
Problems that Terry didn’t face at Texas were empty venues night in and night out. At Texas’ Frank C. Erwin, Jr., Special Events Center, 84 percent of the seats were filled at the home games in the 2010-11 season. At the Save Mart Center, only 47 percent of the seats were filled every home game. The program hasn’t been consistent in the win column and the attendance has taken a hit because of it. Terry talked about what it will take to fill up the Save Mart Center consistently.
“It’s going to be about our brand,” Terry said. “How our team competes and obviously the connection we make with the community. Hopefully, they give us support because we need a great home crowd. We need all the support we can get to help make our venue one of the toughest places to play. I think standing behind our brand and really trying to mirror this community as a hard working and hard playing team.”