Things looking up at Texas Southern University

Texas Southern University athletic director Charles McClelland has released a statement that Texas Southern and Prairie View A&M will play the 2010 Labor Day Classic at 4 p.m. Sept. 5 at Reliant Stadium. The game had been originally set for Sept. 4.

If the 2009-10 sports season is an indication, the turnaround of Texas Southern's athletic program is gaining steam. TSU's campaign officially ended last week when the baseball team fell in the semifinals of the Southwestern Athletic Conference tournament. The Tigers set a school record for total wins (30) and conference wins (18) en route to capturing the SWAC's Western Division title.

The baseball team's season capped a year full of notable accomplishments for TSU. The football squad finished 6-5 for its first winning season since 2000. The men's basketball program improved to 17-16 from 7-25 the year before, advancing to the SWAC tournament final and falling one win short of its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2003. The softball team went 21-20 for its first winning season since 2002 and first Western Division title since 2000.

The Tigers faltered in some areas, notably women's soccer and the track and field programs, but Charles McClelland sees encouraging signs heading into his third year as athletic director. “The ironic theme is that approximately 90 percent of our student-athletes will be returning for next year's competition, so we're a young athletic program and a program that has made tremendous strides,” McClelland said. “We're extremely happy and positive about the direction that (we're heading in) after only two years.”

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CIAA: Run on the Right Track‎

Maybe it’s time to reassess the pecking order in black college sports. I know most of us will argue until we’re blue in the face that it should be what I refer to as the “barber shop sports” of football and basketball. Those are the games folks talk about at the shop, as in, “My team is gonna stomp your alma mater, and we’ll smoke your band at halftime, too.” It makes for animated debates, but HBCUs, don’t produce hoops and football national champions, let alone a consistent pipeline of NBA or NFL talent any more. Track and field does.

Saint Augustine’s College dominated the sprints to claim the NCAA Division II men’s track and field title last week at Johnson C. Smith University, the 31st national title in the school’s history. “The kids were on point,” Falcons head coach George Williams said. “Everything was just so smooth. We didn’t give up anything. I got good performance from all my kids. You don’t win championships with one guy, you win championships with everybody.”

That’s why black college track and field has been able to hold its own since southern white colleges were desegregated in the late 1960s while blue-chip football and basketball players opted for pro farm clubs in the ACC, SEC and Pac-10. Saint Augustine’s is the platinum standard and can hang with the best of Division I, but the Falcons have company. Lincoln University (Mo.) is a Division II national power; Lincoln University(Pa.) is one of the best programs in Division III and joins the CIAA next year. That league will be loaded, to say the least, with St. Aug’s and JCSU on the upswing.

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Lakeland alum gets Hampton University Pirates out of the blocks

Predist Walker, Position: Hurdles/Relays, Height: 5-11, Weight: 158, Class: Junior, Hometown: Suffolk, VA, High School: Lakeland HS.

HAMPTON, VA — Anyone who thinks track isn’t really a team sport should chat with Hampton’s Predist Walker. Walker, a junior for the Pirates and a Lakeland graduate, is the first leg of Hampton University’s 4x100-meter relay team and what a team it’s been during this outdoor season. The Pirates set a new school record and a new MEAC (Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference) record (39.71 seconds) in winning the conference crown in early May.

Last weekend, in the NCAA East Regional in Greensboro, N.C., the Pirates took more time off their new school record with a time of 39.55 seconds. More importantly, HU’s relay team qualified for the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Ore. June 9-12. Hampton’s time is the ninth-best time in NCAA Div. I this season. In addition to the outstanding, and steadily improving, times for the Pirate sprinters, the team is as unified as any sports squad around. In fact, it’s part of why they’re having success. “We’ve been together since our freshman year, so we’ve built a real connection. We’re pretty much like brothers,” Walker said.

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Cador ready to recruit, rebuild SU baseball

The Southwestern Athletic Conference handed out a championship trophy Sunday. The Southern baseball team wasn’t there to see it, much less accept it. The trophy instead rested in the hands of James Cooper, the coach at archrival Grambling, which earned the league’s automatic berth in the NCAA tournament. Monday, while the Tigers waited to learn their NCAA regional destination, the Jaguars were back home, contemplating a season that started with promise but ended in disappointment. Like most of its SWAC counterparts, Southern had talent but also its fair share of flaws.

The Jaguars still had a shot to win last week’s SWAC tournament because no other team was dominant. Jackson State, the Eastern Division champion, crashed and burned with two quick losses. Texas Southern, the West champion, lost its first game and flamed out Friday, two days before the title game. But the same flaws Southern displayed all season — among them, sloppy defense, poor situational hitting and a suspect starting rotation — ultimately doomed the Jaguars in an 8-7 tournament loss to Alcorn State. As a result, their season ended prematurely.

In a sense, Roger Cador’s 26th season as the SU baseball coach had ended long before that. Thanks to a since-fixed glitch in his pacemaker, Cador left his team in the hands of assistant coach Fernando Puebla over the final three weeks — and while Cador watched the tournament from the dugout, he made no in-game decisions. Now, Cador said, doctors have green-lighted his offseason workload, and he intends to get back to business.

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Beach High offensive lineman Harris signs with Savannah State University

Harris was named to the First Team, 2009 Georgia All-Region 3-AAAAA Football Team for his offensive line performance. Harris, who had qualified with test scores since his junior year, plans to major in Aerospace Engineering at Savannah State.

The choice: Go play football or make mom happy? Alfred Ely Beach High School senior Darryl Harris was able to do both. On Wednesday morning, the Bulldogs' offensive tackle signed a letter of intent to continue his career at Savannah State University. "I had already been accepted to Tuskegee University and Alabama State University, but my mom wasn't too out there for me going that far away for college," Harris said. "When Savannah State offered me this opportunity, it allowed me to stay close to home."

Harris, well-built at 6-foot-3, 252 pounds, has the size to be effective but the mobility and quickness to be able to block on the run. "Playing my position of left tackle on the offensive tackle, with my speed, it allows me to get to the outside and contain players better than most people can who aren't as quick as I am," Harris said. "But I know I have to improve my strength more and just get stronger."

Harris is the second Beach Bulldog to sign with SSU in the past week. Receiver/running back/quarterback Simon Heyward, 5-10/180 (First Team wide receiver, 2009 Georgia All-Region 3-AAAAA Football Team) signed his letter of intent seven days earlier.

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Bitter End to Tough Year on the Bluff for Southern Jaguars

Southern University athletic director Greg LaFleur is a former LSU tight end and retired St. Louis Cardinals football player. As always, next season will be a more fruitful year for the SU Jaguars and the former 3rd round NFL draft pick.

Some 2 1/2 months ago, near midcourt at the CenturyTel Center in Bossier City, members of the Southern women’s basketball team gathered, overflowing with joy. They donned T-shirts and hats, commemorating their newly won Southwestern Athletic Conference tournament championship. Smiles and hugs were aplenty. For the SU athletic department, it was the brightest moment in an otherwise brutal year.

Football season started with loads of promise. It quickly turned into a disaster. The Jaguars were lifeless at the Bayou Classic, and a nutty, wild chain of events led to a gruesome last-minute loss at Texas Southern in the season finale. As a result, SU dumped iconic coach Pete Richardson after 17 years, five SWAC championships and four black college national titles. Even to Richardson’s critics, his dismissal was painful to watch, in part because officials hammered it out so swiftly — on a gray Monday afternoon, 48 hours after the TSU loss. It was also painful because Southern bought out the final year of Richardson’s contract — even at a time of severe budget cuts, layoffs and furloughs at the university.

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Former FAMU Quarterback Casey Printers starter for B.C. Lions

BC Lions look to the past to prepare for 2010 football season‎

With the B.C. Lions set to play home games outdoors for the first time in nearly three decades, much of the talk around the team’s 2010 Canadian Football League season will focus on its past and its ties to the original Empire Stadium on the Pacific National Exhibition grounds. But as the Leos get set to kick off training camp in Kamloops on June 6, head coach and general manager Wally Buono intends to take a different path down memory lane. The man with more CFL coaching wins than anyone else is far more interested in recent history than in nostalgia.

Buono spent much of the off-season trying to figure out how to get his 2010 football club to look and play like the teams he had here four, five, and six years ago, when the Lions truly were kings of the CFL jungle, getting to the Grey Cup in 2004 and winning it all in 2006. Last year, the Lions lost their way as they stumbled to a forgettable 8-10 record. While they managed an overtime win in Hamilton in their playoff opener, they suffered an embarrassing 56-18 thumping one week later at the hands of the eventual champion Montreal Alouettes.

And, of course, there is Casey Printers (Florida A&M University), who comes to camp as the starting quarterback after his much-ballyhooed return to the club late last season. Unlike last year, though, Printers will have the luxury of a full training camp to begin putting his stamp on the Lions. Buono believes that Printers can get his game back to the level it was at in 2004, when he was the CFL’s most outstanding player.

“When he came here last year, he worked hard and won the locker room, and not only excited the players in the locker room but everyone in the organization and the fans,” says Buono. “He wants to lead this team. It’s the number-one position on any football team, and we feel right now we’re in excellent hands. Casey is in the prime of his growth and development as a quarterback.”

"You talk about offence, you talk about excitement, you talk about a guy who raises everybody else up, and the guy that did that for us last year was Casey Printers. I think he excited not only the players in the locker-room, but everybody in the organization and our fans. It was something we needed." -- Coach Wally Buono on his No. 1 QB.

Lowered expectations for once mighty Lions

VANCOUVER — The once-mighty B.C. Lions have fallen from the “expectant” category in the Canadian Football League into the “hopeful” group. In an eight-team league, that’s a precipitous drop and a significant change as the rookies gather on the Hillside Stadium fields of the campus of Thompson River University in Kamloops, B.C., for the beginning of training camp on Wednesday.

There are, of course, reasons and explanations for the downgrade. Foremost is team performance the last two seasons in which the Lions, firstly, were bumped from the top perch by the Calgary Stampeders (2008); then forced to qualify for playoffs by crossing over to the East Division when their ugly 8-10 record was superior to two woeful teams in the have-not division.

Heading to camp, instead of grand expectations, the Lions are hoping quarterback Casey Printers is, indeed, the answer to revitalizing a moribund offence. They are hoping they have the line protection needed so Printers or Jarious Jackson or Travis Lulay will have time to look off their primary receiver without fear they are going to be killed by the blind-side rush. Heading for Kamloops, they are hoping that, at 33, running back Jamal Robertson has one more good year in him or until Jamall Lee can get his feet under him. They are hoping they discover another Emmanuel Arceneaux to augment established stars Geroy Simon and Paris Jackson.

LIONS ROAR INTO HILLSIDE

Local football fans are in for a treat. For the next 17 days, the B.C. Lions will be at Hillside Stadium preparing for the upcoming Canadian Football League season. The action gets underway today (June 2) with the beginning of the team’s rookie camp, followed by full two-a-days beginning this weekend. Between June 6 and June 19, the squad will practice twice each day on the artificial turf at Hillside. The only exception will be June 13, when the Lions face the Saskatchewan Roughriders in a CFL exhibition game in Regina.

Jeff Putnam, sport development and business operations manager with the City of Kamloops, said the fact the Lions are holding training camp in the Tournament Capital speaks volumes about the city’s facilities. “It means a lot with an outward perspective,” he said. “It solidifies the fact that our facilities are at a professional calibre.” And it means a lot for local football fans. On-field training camp practice sessions are open to the public — and there’s no charge.

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CFL Game of the Week, Eastern Semi: BC 34 ...

Starring Casey Printers, B.C. Lions, (FAMU); Hamilton WR Marquay McDaniel (Hampton University) and Hamilton RB Martell Mallet (Arkansas-Pine Bluff). Mallet is now 2010 member of NFL Philadelphia Eagles.

Click here to listen to Casey Printers on the TEAM 1040

B.C. Lions sign quarterback Casey Printers to contract extension ...

Just as he was during a magical run in the summer of 2004, Casey Printers is once again the go-to guy for the B.C. Lions. The Canadian Football League's Most Outstanding Player in that 2004 season returned to the Lions Den late last year and showed enough in limited action for the team to anoint him its starting quarterback moving forward. That was made official when the two sides agreed to a new contract on Sunday (March 7).

It's been an interesting six years for Printers since he left the Lions to pursue his dream of playing in the National Football League. When that didn't pan out, he returned to the CFL and had a less than successful stint with the Hamilton Tiger Cats. Printers looked like he may have played himself out of professional football at this time last year when there were no takers for his services. But when the Lions ran into injury problems at the most important position on the field last September, they reached out to Printers, who jumped at the chance to resurrect his career and led the Lions to a playoff win in Hamilton and showed enough to earn the new deal.

He's only 28, an age when many pro quarterbacks are coming into their primes. It seems the professional hardships he's been through may have given Casey Printers some perspective and allowed him to mature. He's got the physical tools to play the game as he displayed with his electrifying performances six seasons ago. And now he's got the contract he was looking for and the starter's job that goes with it. He's taken a less than conventional route to return to his roots, but Casey Printers is back to lead the B.C. Lions in 2010.

Lions release Champion

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The B.C. Lions' remake of the quarterbacking depth chart continued Monday with the release of Zac Champion.The Louisiana Tech grad was mostly a third-and fourth-stringer in his two years with the Lions, although a rash of injuries last season meant he saw action in one game. He went four-of-14 for 35 yards with two interceptions.

Earlier in the off-season, after re-signing Casey Printers to a long-term deal, the Lions released former starter Buck Pierce. He later signed with Winnipeg. Jarious Jackson, also a onetime starter, and Travis Lulay are the other quarterbacks currently on the depth chart behind Printers. General manger/ head coach Wally Buono expects to add one more thrower before the start of training camp June 6 in Kamloops.

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