October 22, 2008

I am truly amazed at the job that our great tennis coach Hardeep Judge has accomplished during the past seven years of his stay at SCSU. Six NCAA tournaments, along with six MEAC titles. What is even more amazing is that he is coaching both the men and women. Coach Judge is the absolute real deal. Big time congrats to Coach Judge.

I stated in my last blog that I wanted to give you an inside look, in their own words, at each of our assistants basketball coaches responsibilities. The first will be Coach Kyle Perry.

My responsibilities with our program at South Carolina State are coordinating our recruiting, scouting, film exchange and the book loan program as well as on the floor coaching.

In coordinating our recruiting efforts I oversee what our needs are for the future of the Bulldog program. In doing this we as a staff work together in communicating who we are recruiting and what is taking place with each recruit. We are able to keep track of this information inside our recruiting database in which each coach’s computer is linked together. This database allows us to stay organized during the recruiting process. Recruiting is a team effort and we are working hard to recruit the best student athlete for South Carolina State University.

Scouting our opponents is important. I make out our scouting schedule to determine who will scout each team. Each coach will have anywhere from 10 to 11 games per year in which to scout. We space the scouts out so that we will have every third game. This gives us time to be well prepared for our next opponent. We as a staff discuss how we want to defend or play certain teams in order to give our kids the best chance to be successful.

Mike Walton has been a great addition to our staff, and he has been a key asset to our film exchange program. Mike and I work together in making sure that we are receiving films on upcoming opponents. We also make sure that we are sending out our game films to teams that have requested our games. It is imperative that we are organized in order to make sure we are receiving the games we need and sending the games we need to send out. Film exchange is a very important aspect in order for us to be able to scout our upcoming opponents.

In our book loan program, I oversee the players who are on scholarship to insure that they obtain and return all of their required books and materials for their courses.

For me personally, the two things I enjoy the most about coaching are recruiting and on the floor coaching. I love to see a young man join the team and grow as a player over a course of time while working with him on the court during individual workouts and practice. Coaching our team and helping them to improve and stay positive is what our profession is all about. It is on the floor that we are able to drive and motivate our players to be the best they can be as a team.

We are working hard to make the bulldog faithful proud of our basketball program and look forward to your support this year.

October 1, 2008

Recruiting update:

I informed you in my last update that we had a 6’11 player whose team was in the Beijing Olympics. Unfortunately he was not allowed to attend classes for the fall semester due to the timing of the Olympics and the start of classes. He had been admitted and would have started classes after about 10 days but he was not allowed to enter in the fall. Looks like he will be on campus in January. We’ve had recruits on campus since the start of school and we are hoping to get commitments soon. We had great weather along with a great win vs. Benedict which always helps on a recruiting visit. We will have three more official visit recruits on campus during Homecoming along with 3-5 unofficial visits from underclassmen from the state. Official means we paid their way and their expenses, unofficial mean they paid their own expenses. We try to get as many in state underclassmen on campus as much as possible on football weekends.

Our Players:

We start practice October 18 and I am extremely proud of our efforts and our attitudes since the beginning of classes. Our guys have worked as hard as any team I have ever had and their attitudes have shown our staff that they really want to make the Bulldog faithful proud.

The Inside Scoop:

Look in the future for each of our basketball staff members to give you an inside look at each one of their responsibilities. Each assistant has four to five areas that he is responsible for and we want to give you a look at what they do and how they go about getting their jobs done.

Buddy and Herman:

Congrats to our men’s golf team and coach Herman Belton. The golf team participated in The Black College Invitational in Atlanta last week and came away on top. Beating a number of teams, one was last year’s MEAC champ Bethune Cookman.

I have had the honor of being able to hang out with the football team on the road last season and this year. I really appreciate the way that Buddy runs his program. When it comes to trying to run a program in a first class way Buddy takes a back seat to no one. I have worked at Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Florida State, and Nebraska University’s, and Buddy and his staff do it right. I am sure our players appreciate him.
 

September 3, 2008

To the Bulldog faithful...

I hope that all of you have enjoyed the Labor Day break and are anxious to get to campus to watch our first home football game. I know that I am excited to see our guys play as well. Let’s pray that we don’t have any serious weather issues with the potential of a hurricane.

Fall conditioning workouts began on the last Friday:

Our guys are really making a great effort to be the very best we can be this year and that’s all that I can ask of them. Their attitudes have been super and their efforts have been top drawer as well. Our new strength and conditioning coach, Allen Van Norten stated to me that he has never been around a group of guys who have worked harder to improve.

Recruiting:

We will have two of our top two recruits coming in this weekend, one a point guard from New York and the other one a 6’8 native of South Carolina by way of an Illinois junior college. Because of NCAA rules I can’t say who they are at this point. We need to have great weather, a win and great atmosphere at the game. Starting September 9th the NCAA allows us to hit the road recruiting. The old saying is true when it comes to recruiting, recruiting is like combing your hair, if you don’t do it everyday you will look bad. I have a great staff and we work at it everyday.

Inner Circle News:

Looks like we have a new addition to our program, he is 6’11, a member or one of the foreign Olympic basketball teams. I will give you an update the next time. I was also asked to serve on the National Association of Basketball Coaches Board. It is not very often that you get to serve your fellow coaches in such a prestigious position as this. I am humbled to have been asked. I also look forward to serving the community of Orangeburg as a board member of The Fellowship of Christian Athletes as well.

In closing, my best to each of you!

 

August 19, 2008

To the Bulldog faithful this is my way of being able to give you an inside view of what goes on with the SCSU basketball program, recruiting, team travel, player development, special interest stories. I hope that you will enjoy the different perspectives that I will present. I am very excited about the upcoming season and I am confident that our returning players feel the same.

Recap 2008: Without a doubt the most challenging year in my 28 year coaching career. We had an extremely difficult non conference schedule, one that you would normally play if you had a very talented senior dominated team. Our coaches were constantly telling me we had to play the hand we were dealt, scheduling is done a year in advance. Laying the proper foundation of how you build a program can be difficult, however I am confident that we laid the proper foundation and we are looking forward to getting the program back to its glory days. We thought we had four games that we were in position to win that we let slip, Hartford in the Vegas tourney in OT, Savannah State we came out flat, at Hampton, led entire game to be beat on a half court shot and at home vs. NCA&T on a last second shot as well. Lost Jesse Burton the last three minutes and we floundered. I was extremely proud of our effort and attitudes the last quarter of the season, players bought in and we really came together.

Summer 2008: We had all of our new and returning players except two on campus first and second semester going to summer school and working out with our new strength and conditioning coach Allen Van Norton. Coach Van Norton is a great hire and our guys really responded to him. Going to summer school is a great help to keeping our guys on track to graduate and I appreciate Mrs. Johnson in helping to get this done financially for our athletes. Many schools talk a good game regarding graduating athletes; I am appreciative that we really are making a great effort in getting it done for our athletes at SCSU. We had two of our coach’s move on, Jermone Riley is now the Head basketball coach at Palo Verde high, back in his hometown of Las Vegas, and Jamar Washington has take a position of AD and basketball coach at Bethune-Bowman middle school in Orangeburg.

2008-09 Season: This will be the 29th year of coaching for me and I have been associated with many good teams. I am extremely excited about the upcoming year, we return four starters, really five, Julius Carter is a starter in my mind, 6th man last year and I thought recruiting wise we filled some holes in getting some depth at the wing and at the point. With transfer 6’8 Josh Jackson competing with Jason Johnson for the center position this allows Julius to move to the power forward which is where he is the most comfortable and most productive. We have speed, quickness, and we have competition at all spots, something we did not have last year. The schedule allows our fans to see us play more home games, four of our first five are at home and hopefully will allow us to build some confidence.

In closing, I hope that you will enjoy getting more of an in depth view of what’s going on with SCSU men’s basketball.

 

August 6, 2008

Welcome to CoachTimCarter.com. I certainly hope that my website will provide you with a better insight into the South Carolina State University basketball program.

We are very excited about the progress that we have made, in a very short period of time, and we look forward to competing for a MEAC championship in 2008-09.

I will be updating my blog on a regular basis, leading up to and throughout the entire season. If you have questions or comments, please be sure to take a moment to contact me.

I would like to thank you for taking the time to visit my official website and for your continued support of South Carolina State Athletics!