{"id":74,"date":"2011-10-13T13:23:56","date_gmt":"2011-10-13T13:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/sites\/gsm\/?p=74"},"modified":"2014-06-02T14:55:12","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T18:55:12","slug":"well-seasons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/2011\/10\/13\/well-seasons\/","title":{"rendered":"Well Seasoned"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"wellSeasoned\"<\/a><\/p>\n

CY anxious to see battle-hardened Eagles take the court<\/h3>\n

Charlton Young can\u2019t wait to get this season started.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going from being probably the youngest team in the country to one of the older teams in our conference,\u201d said the Eagle men\u2019s basketball head coach.<\/p>\n

Among the older players returning this season will be senior Ben Drayton, who Young says has improved tremendously.<\/p>\n

Senior Willie Powers will also be returning from an injury sustained last season. Young wants Powers to drop about 15 pounds before the start of the season in order to take some pressure off of his knees and ankles so as to prevent further injuries.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith those two guys in our backcourt, we have two of the better guards in the conference,\u201d Young said.<\/p>\n

There will also be five of last year\u2019s freshman players returning this season, including Marvin Baynham and Jelani Hewitt \u2013 two players that Young says could have easily been on the SoCon All- Freshman team.<\/p>\n

The 19th-ranked freshman in the country, Eric Ferguson, and teammates Sam Mike and Tr\u00e9 Bussey will complete the list of returning freshman players.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose five are coming back and they got cooperative education; they got on-the-job training. I threw them out there even when they didn\u2019t know what in the world was going on,\u201d Young said.<\/p>\n

In addition to those players returning from last season, Young has picked up three incoming freshmen. Tyrone Brown, from Millen, Ga., and Cameron Dunigan, from Sumter, S.C., are both 6-foot-9 players that Young says are \u201chigh-energy individuals that can run, block shots, and finish around the rim.\u201d<\/p>\n

Combo-guard and all-state wide receiver, Jesse Purnell from Augusta, Ga., will be the third incoming freshman to complete the team\u2019s line-up.<\/p>\n

Young\u2019s main focus for improvement over last season\u2019s performance lies in the team\u2019s ability to shoot.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did not shoot the ball well last season. Some of it was inexperience and the speed of the game. Some of it was losing our point guard, Willie Powers, who kind of set guys up and made the games easier for people,\u201d Young said.<\/p>\n

To improve the team\u2019s shooting percentage, Young is making sure that during every individual workout the players are taking over 500 shots and charting each one of them.<\/p>\n

Young is leading the men\u2019s basketball team into its third year of a program that he says is growing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe took our knocks, but I knew what I was doing. I wanted to build it with freshmen. We wanted to build a program that could sustain itself. We\u2019re in year three and we have a chance to take off and have a really good two- or three-year run with these kids we have in the program,\u201d Young said.<\/p>\n

Young has no doubt that the University and the fans will have the patience to wait for him to make the Georgia Southern men\u2019s basketball team a winning program again.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Keel, Sam Baker, and our administration have all been fabulous with me and my staff, and with the kids in our program. But, even more impressive than our administration, the student body and the fans have been unbelievable,\u201d Young said.<\/p>\n

Young said that at the end of last season he would still see between 1,500 to 2,000 fans at each game to support a team that was struggling.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe community and the student body believe in what we\u2019re doing,\u201d Young said.<\/p>\n

Matthew D\u2019La Rotta<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CY Anxious to See Battle-hardened Eagles Take the Court<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[36],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","tag-fall-2011"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}