Hoo Dat? - cusa-fans.com

[mr. pony]

Hoo Dat?
SMU Blitzes Rice Late For Milestone Fifth C-USA Win
By Rick Atkinson for cusa-fans.com
http://cusa-fans.com/

DALLAS – Rice’s men's basketball team may still have a ways to go, but its media relations stance, led by assistant sports information director Ron Mears, is pure big-time, baby. They don’t let just anybody talk to their cellar-dwelling Owls.

After SMU’s 67-57 win on over Rice on Wednesday, your intrepid, yet evidently Not-Ready-For-Rice-Time reporter, was rebuffed by Mears (who must think he reigns over the Kansas Jayhawks) when inquiry was made about interview possibilities.

Mears sniffed that Rice doesn’t do “fan sites” or sites he’s “never heard of.”

Really?

That’s funny - even for Rice. After all, Memphis, UTEP and UAB have happily provided access to their players and coaches during visits to Dallas this season - even to simpering Web-site scribes!

(Come to think of it, though, I see why the 1-10 Owls wouldn’t want the extra publicity.)

So, sans post-game insight from second-year Rice coach Ben Braun or the Owls’ starting 6-foot-7 freshman forward from Iran, Arsalan Kazemi, we press on. (More on Kazemi later.)

SMU blew this one open late, streaking to the finish with a 12-2 run. Tied at 55-all with four minutes left, Mouhammad Faye and Derek Williams led the Mustangs home, combining for 10 of SMU’s final dozen points.

“It’s great to win,” said SMU coach Matt Doherty. “And I feel very fortunate to win because there’s a fine line between winning or losing. At the end of the game … our shots go in, their shots don’t go in.”

“I thought our guys stepped up. I basically sat back and let them play.”

“I don’t think we were great today,” Doherty said. “I thought we were good. I didn’t like our defense, especially in the first half. I didn’t like our energy, in particular. But we managed to win.”



SMU's Mouhammad Faye, left, sticks with Rice's Tamir Jackson in the first half

That's Five

SMU’s victory marked the first time the program has won five league games since joining Conference USA in 2005-06.

Lucas Kuipers and Connor Frizzelle paced Rice with 19 and 16 points, respectively.
Kazimi had a game-high eight rebounds for the Owls. He continues to lead Conference USA in league-game rebounding, with 10.2 per game.

Guard Derek Williams led SMU with 20 points in his seventh 40-minute game this season. He also collected four assists with no turnovers.

“Derek … is probably the Most Valuable Player on our team and he’s had such a tremendous year,” Doherty said. “But for us to be successful we need him to lead and take care of the team, not just take care of himself. And I need him to be energetic. Energy is such a powerful commodity.”

Mouhammad Faye continued his strong play off the bench with 15 points and five rebounds in 27 minutes. “He’s basically my sixth starter,” Doherty said. “I’m saying [to him,] ‘At [the 15:00 mark], you’re going in.’ … I want him to have peace of mind that, ‘I’m involved in this and I’m going to play major minutes.’”

Robert Nyakundi had 11 points for SMU and Papa Dia added 10, with a team-leading seven rebounds.

SMU (12-13, 5-6) again finds itself knotted at sixth place in C-USA, this time with Houston, UCF and Southern Miss. Doherty said with five regular season games left, the Mustangs can “see the finish line.”

“I think now we put the pedal down,” he said. “We’ve stepped on the gas a little bit.”

SMU outscored Rice 20-8 in the paint and 12-5 on second-chance points. The Mustangs won the boards battle, 33-29. Rice shot 50-percent in the first half before slumping to 33-percent in the second under more man-to-man pressure by SMU. The Owls hit six threes before halftime and just three the rest of the way.

The Mustangs led at the half, 34-31, after trailing Rice by eight.

For the second game in a row, guard Rodney Clinkscales started in place of Mike Walker. And Doherty liked the results, though Clinkscales’ numbers, (two points, three assists, two boards), weren’t flashy.

“Clink is a pretty tough kid,” Doherty said. “I think he embraces the moment a little bit. I think Mike is a little more comfortable coming of the bench and tonight it proved true.” (Walker’s three down the stretch - his only points on the night - pushed SMU lead to 55-50, with six minutes left.)

“I just like where we’re at right now,” Doherty said. “It’s not half-bad to change things from time to time, just to shock the system.”

Iran In The House

High in Moody Coliseum’s southern rafters on Wednesday was a lively group about 40 Iranians from the Dallas area who had come out to cheer on Rice’s Kazemi, their homeland hero.

Amir Emam said the group had coalesced on the Internet when they heard of Kazemi’s upcoming appearance at SMU. Kazemi, Emam explained, was captain of Iran’s under-18 national basketball team and is a huge star in Iran. “Once he came here, almost all the Iranians in the U.S. and in Iran have followed his progress, and how he has matured as a player, and how he became the first Iranian to play in Division I basketball.”

“We follow his games and all his stats on the net,” Emam said. “Now that he’s in our town, we have to come out and support him.”

“I talked to [Kazemi] on Facebook and I told him we were going to do this. He knew well in advance that we were going to be out here.”

Emam said Kazemi was noticed by U.S. scouts while playing in the under-18 World Cup in Australia. “The scouts told him about coming to the U.S. and he did come. He played one year in high school [The Patterson School, North Carolina]. He had offers from Louisville, Maryland, Syracuse, and he chose Rice. To be honest with you, I don’t know [why]. Maybe it’s academics.”

Emam said Kazemi probably has a big following in Houston too. “When they have such a famous player in their city, I’m pretty sure they come out.”

Leading chants for Kazemi and the Owls against SMU was one man blowing a large blue horn and another beating a traditional Persian drum called a tonbak. The group easily made up the loudest, most enthusiastic showing of Rice basketball fans in Dallas in years.


Dallas-area fans of Rice's freshman forward, Arsalan Kazemi, of Iran

Notes:
*Going back to 1917, SMU now leads the series with Rice, 116-74.
*Derek Williams reached the 800-career-point mark against the Owls, becoming the 18th Mustang to do so over any two-year span.
*Mouhammad Faye had his seventh 15-plus point game of the season for SMU.
*Attendance for SMU-Rice: 2,100

Next two for SMU
*Saturday, Feb. 20, @ Memphis, 7 p.m. CT
*Wednesday, Feb. 24, @ East Carolina, 6 p.m. CT

Quotable Doherty
On rebuilding SMU men’s basketball, “We’re not a quick-fix institution. This program has been underwater for a long time. And I think people would admit that. In ’93, they hung a banner but I think they got hot at the right time. In terms of sustained success, you have to go back to the mid-80s and beyond to get out of that rut. … To get that thing moving again, it takes more than a head coach. It takes more than a couple of players. It takes [Director of Athletics] Steve Orsini, [school president] Dr. Turner, and everybody else … to get behind that locomotive and get the thing moving again. And I think it’s moving. It’s probably not moving as fast as everybody wants, but it’s moving. … There are some things still in the infrastructure that need to be fixed. One thing is fan attendance.”


Arsalan Kazemi

[RGV Pony]

I like the pic of the Iranian fans. Good job coaxing them to flash pony ears, too.

[Pony_Fan]

Let's get an Iranian on our team, then Moody will be loud all the time

[mrydel]

Let's get an Iranian on our team, then Moody will be loud all the time

Yes. You might say we could go nuclear.

[Pony_Fan]

Let's get an Iranian on our team, then Moody will be loud all the time

Yes. You might say we could go nuclear.

They had a soccer type chant going with a small group of folks - did pretty well.