Getting ready for another high school basketball season ...
Remember back in 1987 when J.R. Reid graced the cover of Sports Illustrated with the words, “Carolina’s Main Man?”
Boy, did North Carolina coach Dean Smith bristle at that.
We’re a team, he cried over and over. J.R.’s a freshman. He’s not the main man!
Thankfully, West Rowan basketball coach Mike Gurley doesn’t have that Carolina mentality. He went to Belmont Abbey, where if you had a horse, you rode him.
Gurley has a horse right now playing in the Gurley Dome over in Mount Ulla. Ahorse that he is definitely going to saddle up through March.
Hopefully, riding that horse to a 3A state championship.
Of course, we’re speaking of Donte Minter, the class of this year’s returning players in Rowan County. And that’s why he is on the cover alone.
Brittney Gaddy of South would’ve been on the cover too but she tore up a knee this summer and may not even play.
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Minter could finish as the county’s second leading all-time scorer behind that former kid at West Rowan named Scooter (Sherrill, for all of you who live in a cave). Bobby Phillips, a former Salisbury Hornet and now European pro player, will probably have to settle for third.
Minter has 1,410 points going into this season. That should improve dramatically. His career average of 15.84 should improve dramatically.
Gurley has said Minter is a Kevin McHale-like player. After scoring 26 points in the opener last week in a win over rival Central
Cabarrus, Minter was called “Olajuwonish” by his coach.
Whoever he plays like, Gurley says, “In our offense, he’s the main cog.”
More appropriately, the main man.
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Minter has already committed to Appalachian State. Gaddy has signed with Pembroke State.
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So Mr. Gurley, what about those high preseason rankings?
“I’m not going to concern myself with it,” said the man who has led West Rowan to 102 wins in just four years.
The ranking is there because of Minter, at 6-foot-8, joining 6-7 Junior Hairston and 6-7 Phillip Williams underneath, with the fastest man since Carl Lewis — Horatio Everhart — at point guard.
And let’s not forget that West put five players in double figures and scored 90 in the opener. That’s scary.
Gurley shrugs it all off, because he learned from the Scooter years not to get too uptight.
“There was some undue pressure on Scooter’s team,” he remembered. “Basketball is a game that’s meant to be fun.”
Will teams be intimidated as soon as they hit the court with West Rowan?
“Iwish they’d fall down and let us win,” Gurley said. “But the last time I looked, teams don’t do that.”
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Has Bud Selig become commissioner of the North Piedmont Conference?
The powers that be have decided to take a page out of Selig’s TVbaseball plan. Selig has been chastised for scheduling World Series games so late that kids (and most adults, for that matter) can’t keep their eyes open long enough to watch the end.
Now, the NPCathletic directors, in all their wisdom, have decided to see just how late they can keep kids out on school nights.
Used to be, the two jayvee teams played at one sight and the two varsity teams played at the other. Not anymore. The ADs say schools will play all four games at one sight.
Which, of course, means some boys varsity games won’t even start until 8:30 or 9 p.m.
That’s when they used to end, for cryin’ out loud!
The ADsare trying to cover up this mistake by saying the jayvee games will be reduced to seven-minute quarters and five-minute halftimes.
Ain’t working. Complaints are already coming in. One fellow said he didn’t get home from the West-Central Cabarrus quadrupleheader (is that a word?) until 11:30 p.m. on a Tuesday night.
Another said the East Rowan boys didn’t finish their opener until 10:30.
Word is that the new rule was voted in by a 6-1 margin. What are these guys thinking?
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Preseason diaper dandies: First-year players who could make an impact are Shayla Fields at Salisbury, Brittany Roberson at West and Eric Taylor at East Rowan.
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The future: Jennifer Shoaf’s Salisbury girls, who have only three seniors to go with three freshmen and three sophomores on a 13-player roster.
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There are three new coaches in the county:Derek Kurnitsky at East Rowan (boys), Toni Wheeler at West Rowan (girls) and Mike White at North Rowan (girls).
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Preseason players of the year: West’s Hillary Hampton, West’s Minter.
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Transfers of the Year: West Rowan’s Roberson, who comes from Sacred Heart and Salisbury’s Matt Butler, who stands 6-5 and weighs 255 and comes over from East.
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Players who could have breakout seasons: North’s Junior Farmer, East’s Haley Shaw, South’s Tre Hornbeak and Sade Jordan.
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Best quote: Davie’s Jim Young when asked what it was like to have to play in the Central Piedmont 4A:
“Duke had the best recruiting year. North Carolina was second. Then comes Reynolds and West Forsyth.”
Forsyth County has a policy that an athlete can transfer to any school to play sports.
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More Yugos: How does Young, a transplanted Yankee from Pennsylvania, deal with the Forsyth County dilemma? He brings in foreign exchange students. This year, he has two more.
If that doesn’t work, he has another idea.
“I”ll just take all of the guys that Gurley cuts at West Rowan and Howard West cuts at Reynolds,” he laughed.
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And finally ...
Don’t you wish the coaches could compete on the court against coaches from other counties? Rowan would prove that it doesn’t just have a good group of teenagers.
Can you imagine Windsor Eagle at Salisbury or Jeff Vail at East (our two favorite P.A. men) calling out this co-ed starting lineup:
At center, standing 6-foot-7, South’s John Davis.
At power forward, standing 6-foot-5, North’s Mike “The Whopper” White.
At small forward, standing 6-foot-5, West’s Mike Gurley.
At shooting guard, standing 6-foot-1, Salisbury’s Drew “Silk” Mathews.
And at point guard, standing six feet, West’s Toni Wheeler.
For the record, Davis played at St. Andrews, White at Livingstone (football) and Hampton University (hoops), Gurley at Belmont Abbey, Mathews at Catawba and Wheeler at Wingate.
And if we were counting assistants, South’s 6-3 Tracy Connor, a former star at Wake Forest, would surely be in the lineup somewhere, knocking one of those guys to the pine.
We’re so cocky about this good basketball county that we’ll go a step farther. We’d even put our assistant principals up against another county. Benny Robbins of West, one of Henry Kluttz’s right-hand men, is No. 31 on West’s all-time scoring list at 627 points. And I’m sure you’re still in playing shape, right, Benny?
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Contact Ronnie Gallagher at 704-797-4287 or rgallagher@salisburypost.com
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