Jan. 20, 2008

THE HERALD-SUN (www.HeraldSun.com)

NCCU sacrifices for the future

By Mike Potter : The Herald-Sun (mpotter@heraldsun.com)

Jan 20, 2008

DURHAM -- In any context, $434,500 is a large chunk, and it certainly is a lot of money for a brand-new Division I athletic program.

And that, minus what's going back for expenses, is the amount of money the men's basketball team at N.C. Central is bringing in for its 2007-08 schedule that includes 21 games on its opponents' home courts.

Established Division I programs, even those that aren't used to recent success, try to put together schedules that will give them at least an opportunity to win more games than they lose.

But when Henry Dickerson and his staff put together this season's schedule -- the Eagles' first at the NCAA's top level -- that wasn't a consideration. And if the university was going to show it was serious about its move to Division I, it wasn't even a possibility.

So Dickerson put together a slate that would give the team exposure, both across the country and across North Carolina. He assembled a slate that would match his young team -- with just one starter returning from the 2006-07 club that went 13-15 in the CIAA -- against some of the best-known basketball programs in the country.

The magic number was 23, the number of games a new Division I team would have to play to be listed in the Rating Percentage Index standings. Although some big-time schools might have given the Eagles road games even if NCCU had not counted for their RPI, many would decline a game with a "non-counter" because it might as well be a game against a school from a lower division.

Heading into today's action, the Eagles were ranked 298th out of 341 Division I teams in the RPI, with the 84th toughest schedule in the country to this point. They've had a tougher row to hoe than Georgetown or Indiana or Notre Dame.

The win-loss results have been predictable. NCCU will travel to Utah Valley State for a Tuesday night game sporting a 1-22 record and a 17-game losing streak.

The 30-plus-point blowouts -- there were 10 of them -- may well be over. But even in their remaining seven games, there's no such thing as a gift-wrapped victory.

By the time the Eagles visit Colgate on Feb. 23, they will have played games in 13 states. But even though they will play only seven games at McLendon-McDougald Gym, NCCU fans around the state haven't been cheated. The Eagles will play against 10 other schools from North Carolina, a figure thought to be a state record.

Dickerson's boys are taking one for future Eagles men's basketball teams, the athletic program, and in fact the university as a whole.

"I'm actually enjoying most of this," said Dickerson, who was 72-73 during a five-year stint as head coach at Chattanooga.

"It's been fun to watch them. The staff [assistants Ray Martin and LeVelle Moton] has worked real hard, and [the players'] knowledge is so much better than it was when they first got here."

The Eagles did have a long way to go.

The only players on Dickerson's roster who had had much to do with winning a basketball game for a four-year college were junior combo guard Bryan Ayala and senior forward Charles Futrell.

Futrell is averaging 16 points and 7.3 rebounds to lead the team in both categories, while Ayala averages 12.6 points and a team-leading 3.5 assists. Futrell is among the national leaders in minutes played with 36.9 per game. Nobody else on the roster is averaging even 5.0 points.

That Ayala even plays college basketball is a testament to his courage, as he spent plenty of time in casts and wheelchairs as a toddler, having been born with a club right foot. And Futrell -- a 6-foot-6-inch wide receiver who was key to the Eagles winning back-to-back CIAA football titles and a Black National Championship in 2006 -- decided to come back for his fifth year of eligibility after attending two NFL camps and not making the cut.

"Football has been my main thing, but I love playing basketball, too," Futrell said. "I saw the schedule we had to play and knew it was going to be a challenge. But I'm an athlete, and I like challenges."

"We want to build a program," Dickerson said. "So we went out looking for freshmen we thought would play for us for four years and graduate. We could have gone and gotten some people just to put on the uniform and help win some basketball games -- and that might have made some of the fans happy. But we want our players to be the type of young men our alumni will hire after they graduate."

The team as a whole has done well in the classroom. Both Dickerson and interim athletics director Ingrid Wicker-McCree said the team's GPA was up from last year's team, even though the team missed 20 days of classes in the first semester.

Futrell said the support from fellow students and fans had been pretty good despite the record.

"Sometimes somebody will ask how we could be 1-20 or whatever," Futrell said. "But just about everybody has been supportive. Most of them know why we're doing this."

And although there has been a little grumbling from Eagle Nation about the mounting defeats, Dickerson has Wicker-McCree firmly in his corner.

"We're working to get a new contract done," Wicker-McCree said. "We knew when we moved into Division I things would be hard at first, particularly in men's basketball. Coach Dickerson wanted to play that schedule.

"And I can see a lot of improvement in his team. As a coach myself, that's important to see. We did a survey of the student-athletes, and they're saying it has been a positive experience. They have really enjoyed traveling and seeing different parts of the country. And those are experiences they never would have had if we had stayed in Division II."

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