Tulane Men's Basketball Return to Fogelman Friday Afternoon
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After splitting their two games in the Shriners Children's Charleston Classic in South Carolina, including a 93-30 overtime thriller over Boston College, the Tulane men's basketball team is back in Fogelman Arena for a Friday afternoon contest versus cross-state foe Nicholls State. Tipoff is set for 2:00 p.m. Friday.
In the first game of the tournament, a loss to Utah State, a pair of coach Ron Hunter's top players, Curtis Williams, Jr. and Scotty Middleton, weren't playing at the pace he wanted, so Hunter took them out to observe for a few minutes. It made a difference.
"(Curtis) and Scotty, we had to get them to slow the game down," Hunter observed. "I took them out of the lineup, and I think it helped. Since that time, things have kind of slowed up for them. They're really talented players. We're trying to figure out how to take their skill sets and fit them into what we're doing."
It worked. Williams shot 12-for-18 from the field in that overtime victory over BC, including 4-for-8 from three-point land, hitting a career high 32-points, even pulling down nine rebounds for the Wave. For his efforts, Williams was named the American Conference player of the week.
"We've been preaching consistency," Hunter told us this week. "Generally, not many teams or players are consistent. We're just trying to build that each day. The guys are coming (along). What I'm excited about is what we're going to look like in six or seven weeks."
The trip toward what that will look like begins Friday at 2:00 p.m. in Fogelman against Nicholls State. The Green Wave come into the game at 4-2 on the year. Though the Colonels have lost all five games they've played this year, one of those was against 9th ranked Kentucky and their last one against unbeaten Oklahoma State.
Doug has covered a gamut of sporting events in his fifty-plus years in the field. He started doing sideline reporting for Louisiana Tech football games for the student radio station. Doug was Sports Director for KNOE-AM/FM in Monroe in the mid-80s, winning numerous awards from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association for Best Sportscast and Best Play-by-Play. High school play-by-play for teams in Monroe, Natchitoches, New Orleans, and Thibodaux, LA dot his resume. He did college play-by-play for Northwestern State University in Natchitoches for nine years. Then, moving to the Crescent City, Doug did television PBP of Tulane games and even filled in for legendary Tulane broadcaster, Ken Berthelot in the only game Kenny ever missed while doing the Green Wave games. His father was an alumnus of Tulane in the 1940s, so Doug has attended Tulane football games in old Tulane Stadium, the Superdome, and Yulman. He was one of the 86,000 plus on December 1, 1973, sitting in the North End Zone to seeTulane shutout the LSU Tigers, 14-0. He was there when the Posse ruled Fogelman and in Turchin when the Wave made it to the World Series. He currently is the public address voice of the Tulane baseball team.