Adam MacDonald
VALDOSTA — The Valdosta State Blazers and Lady Blazers will try to accomplish something today that they haven’t done in 14 years: Sweep West Georgia in Carrollton.
The Blazers and Lady Blazers face the Wolves and Lady Wolves in The Coliseum starting at 5:30 p.m. The last time both teams left Carrollton with wins in the same year was 1996.
Today might be the best chance since 1996 that VSU has to pull off the sweep. The sixth-ranked Blazers (18-2, 4-0) have their best team in years and return four starters who won at West Georgia last season for the first time since 1996. The Lady Blazers (12-7, 4-0) are on a seven-game winning streak and have beaten Gulf South Conference opponents by an average of 17.5 points.
On the other side, West Georgia basketball is struggling. For most of the offseason and into the regular season, UWG has been under the dark cloud of an NCAA investigation.
Just before the Division II basketball tournament participants were announced last season, UWG self-imposed a postseason ban on all its athletic teams. The Lady Wolves basketball team was held out of the national tournament by its own University and the Lady Blazers slipped into the tournament as the eighth and final seed in the South Region.
This season the Lady Wolves are 8-12 overall and 1-3 in the GSC. They lost to West Florida, a team VSU beat by 24 points. Gone are Dominic Cranford, Ashley Huff and Tia Jackson, who helped the Lady Wolves to back-to-back GSC East titles in 2008 and 2009. Lady Blazers coach Kiley Hill said that trio kept him up many nights, but they are no longer in the picture since they were seniors last year.
The Lady Wolves best player this season was Kim Jones, but she didn’t qualify academically for the 2010 spring semester. Thomassian Wyatt and Alexis Pace have each started 19 of the Lady Wolves 20 games. Wyatt averages 8.6 points per game and Pace averages 2.6 points per game. However, Hill isn’t relaxing in a series where the last three games have been decided by six points.
“They’ve lost some major firepower, but they are not a bad basketball team,” Hill said.
The Blazers have a rare chance to start a winning streak in Carrollton. They won a 61-60 thriller in The Coliseum last year in front of 4,100 people to snap a 13-year losing streak in Carrollton. Ricardo Lewis banked in a layup high off the glass with six second left to put the Blazers ahead and the Wolves’ Doug Daniels missed a 3-pointer as time expired.
This year the Wolves are 10-9 overall and 2-2 in the GSC.
To make it two in a row, the Blazers will have to deal with one of the GSC’s best players in John Pringle, who averages 14.6 points and 7.8 rebounds per game. Pringle scored 30 points in two games against the Blazers last year.
However, Pringle is the Wolves only mainstay from last year returning to the rivalry. Chris Miller-Williams, Deion Simms and Gavin Field all scored in double digits against VSU last year but are no longer on the Wolves.
“It’s a great game because it’s a rivalry game,” Blazers coach Mike Helfer said. “We’re going to have to understand that it’s a rivalry game. You can really throw the records out the window. The team that comes and plays the hardest and plays the smartest is going to win.”
The games can be heard on 92.1 FM.
