SUU looks to improve on defense

CEDAR CITY — Southern Utah University basketball coach Bill Evans said it doesn't take a mathematician to figure out why his team went 10-18 last year. Simple math will do.

SUU's opponents had more opportunities to score because of the T-Birds' lack of rebounding on both ends of the floor, and overall defense.

"All in all we're spending more time trying to get them to understand the importance of rebounding the ball and defending better," Evans said.

The T-Birds were second in the nation in 3-point field goal percentage and 15th in field goal percentage, yet they lost 18 games. In all, their opponents scored on 79 more points than the T-Birds and that only proves Evans' points. Rebounding and creating more possessions with the defense will lead to more points.

"We need to get more second chances and come up with more loose balls," he said.

The T-Birds ranked dead last in the Mid Conference in offensive rebounding with just 7.12 per game, and they ranked sixth in defensive rebounding (20.81) and eighth in assist/turnover ratio.

"We're trying to get better defensively and trying to hang onto the ball better," Evans said.

Evans calls himself stubborn because his team has strictly played match-up zone defense, but this year he will adjust and play more man-to-man defense in hopes of creating more much-needed possessions.

In four of the last five years the T-Birds have led the league in field-goal percentage and have been in the top three in field-goal percentage defense.

"The big thing is not rebounding the basketball," he said. "It comes down to possessions."

Working in the T-Birds' favor in accomplishing those goals is the return of DeAngelo Newsom, who was the only T-Bird to start all 28 games. He led the team in rebounding in 23 of those games and finished with 6.9 rebounds per game. He also led the conference is steals with 2.36 per game. He averaged 10.2 points a game.

Jason Baker leads all returners in scoring with 10.8 points per game. The T-Birds also return center Lubor Olsovsky, forward Tim Gainey, guard Jeff Martini, forward Rand Janes, forward Nate Janes, guard Steve Barnes and center Vaughn Scouten.

Curtis Lincoln, Telton Hall and Esteban Bonzano are junior college transfers.

The T-Birds have exhibition home games with Grand Canyon (Saturday) and Western State (Nov. 11) before opening the year by hosting Western Montana (Nov. 19).

The T-Birds' tough preseason schedule includes games with Utah (Nov. 30), Montana (Dec. 2) and BYU (Dec. 28).

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E-mail: jhinton@desnews.com