Men’s basketball has 2 players return

Last year's championship season will be difficult for the 2006-07 North Lake College basketball Blazers to duplicate, but our new guys have been working hard to get ready for the challenge. Brandon Brooks and Rickey Lee are the only two guys returning from last year's team. We do have four players returning from our practice red-shirt squad who will help us. They are Derick Sumpter, Mike Mokeski, Bryan Norman and Bryan Mokeski. Derick and Bryan Norman are 5'10” guards, while Mike and Bryan Mokeski are big guys. Mike is 6'9” and Bryan is 7'0”.

We brought in seven transfers to help us replace the talented, experienced players who won for us last year. Brandon Beaty is a 6'9” forward from Southeastern Oklahoma State University. Reggie Weckstein is a 6'4” guard coming from Southwestern Oklahoma State University. Tim Nelson and Curtis Scipio are guards who played at Southwestern Oregon Community College. Two players, Ehis Osunde and Duran Brownlow, played at Clarendon College last season. David Nash is a 6'8” forward coming from Richland College.

In addition, 12 incoming freshman are working to contribute so I am enjoying working with this year's team. We have a lot of guys who have the potential to progress into great college players. If everyone pulls together and learns how to work together we could be a very good team and possibly return to the national tournament in New York next March.

Our regular season starts Nov. 2, when we play in a tournament in Liberal, Kansas. Texas Wesleyan University's JV squad will be our opponent for our fi rst home game, which is at 3:30 p.m. Nov. 9. We should have a very entertaining team that will be fun to watch, and I hope that we get more people to come out and support the team than ever before.

— Tim McGraw is the Men's Basketball coach
at NLC.