Hooten: New look 2011-12

It has been a long time since I have posted for you all to read. First and foremost, I would like to apologize for not keeping you all more up to date with the happenings of our program.  

If you haven’t been able to figure it out yet, I am not much on social networking. I don’t Tweet, and I check my Facebook about once a month if that. So from time to time I just forget to put something together for Jason Barfield, so please don’t be mad at him it’s not his fault.

A lot has taken place since the last time I posted.  Our first season was probably an overall success. I will always be my toughest critic, but I felt like coming in and taking over a team full of returners that were used to doing things a certain way ended up being pretty darn good.

We won 9 out of our last 12 and that’s always a sign of a pretty good team! We lost 3 very good student-athletes and they will be hard to replace in more than one way. BUT, I will try and make this the last time I speak about what we’ve lost and try to concentrate on what we have coming in. It’s not fair to our young guys and returners to compare them all year long to Clavell, Crow and Pevehouse. Just like it wasn’t fair to those guys getting compared to Ashton and Corey all year long.

I have heard a lot of you had questions about why so many of the guys besides those 3 are not returning this season. I am a person that tells it how it is, and will not sugar-coat or hop around a question. If you have not seen our roster yet, we return 6 players from last year’s team: Two walk-ons (Cameron Sadler, Wes Fritz), Konner Tucker who was sitting out last season and Antuan Bootle, Aaron Thompson and Marcus James. That is approximately 11.5 ppg and 12.3 rpg. Again, we are more focused on what we have back than what we have lost.

This will also be the last time I discuss another topic. Off last year’s team, we have 5 young men that are not returning. Two of them were staff-coaches decision, while the other three decided they may fit better somewhere else.  Here at Sam Houston State, our basketball program has and always will stand for student-athletes who take care of their business in the classroom as well as on/off the court (period).

The last issue I’m discussing for the last time is Tra’Vaughn White. Tra’Vaughn has decided to attend Independence Junior College in Kansas. It is not an academic issue, it is just simply the coach there continually recruited him all summer long even though Tra’Vaughn had signed an NLI with us. Tra’Vaughn feels he can go to a bigger school after JC, so we wish him the best of luck.

Everything happens for a reason, that’s why we are extremely excited about the new guys that are here on campus and looking forward to a great year on the court and in the classroom. Obviously we started class two weeks ago, and we started working out on August 29^th.  Our roster has changed so much that it would take another couple of pages to talk about each one of our guys.  I will save that for another day.

Not sure how good we will be due to the youthfulness and inexperience, but I have a pretty good feeling that this group will bring it every day and work extremely hard! Usually that in itself can be a sign of success! Also, I believe last year I predicted that my Rangers would make it to the World Series? 

GO BEARKATS!!!


-- Jason Hooten
Head basketball coach