BCSP Notes . . .
CIAA Tourney shaping up
The CIAA is in its last week of regular season play as it prepares for the 64th annual Men's and 35th annual Women's Tournaments next week in Charlotte, N.C.
Headed into the final week of the season, Virginia Union and Elizabeth City State are the top two men's seeds with Bowie State and Fayetteville State atop the women's standings. Tournament seeds are based on regular season conference records.
The women's tournament tips off Tuesday with two games at 7 and 9 p.m. pitting the four lowest seeded teams (7 vs. 10, 8 vs. 9) playing to get into Wednesday's quarterfinals.
Women's quarterfinals will run at 11 a.m., 1, 3 and 5 p.m. on Wednesday followed by two men's games between the lowest seeds (7 vs. 10, 8 vs. 9) playing at 7 and 9 p.m. to get into the Thursday quarterfinals.
Men's quarterfinals games are set for Thursday, Feb. 26 at 1, 3, 7 and 9 p.m. Friday's women's semifinals are at 1 and 3 p.m, with the men's semis to follow at 7 and 9 p.m.
The women's championship game is at 5 p.m. on Saturday with the men's final at 8 p.m.
Ticket booklets are still available and can be purchased thru Ticketmaster or thru conference schools. Individual session tickets for Tuesday and Wednesday will be available next week at the Time Warner Cable Arena. No individual tickets will be available for Thursday, Friday or Saturday sessions.
Hampton, Norfolk State rule MEAC Indoor Track
The Hampton Lady Pirates and Norfolk State Spartans won the 2009 Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) Track and Field titles Saturday afternoon at the Prince George's Sports and Learning Complex.
Hampton recorded 148 points en route to their seventh consecutive MEAC title and eighth overall. The Spartans of Norfolk State captured their fourth consecutive title with 150 total points.
Hampton's Maurice Pierce was named the women's outstanding coach for the seventh straight year. Hampton's Racquel Vassell posted 40.50 points to earn Outstanding Performer accolades. Vassell won the 60m dash, 200m dash and long jump.
Norfolk State finished in second with 107 points followed by Maryland Eastern Shore (88), Morgan State (61) and Howard (42).
Norfolk State's Marlon Woods was named the Outstanding Performer of the men. Woods won the high jump, triple jump and finished second in the long jump. Kenneth Giles of Norfolk State was named the outstanding coach.
Morgan State scored 103 points to finish second in the team standings. Hampton (96) and Maryland Eastern Shore (57) followed in second and third respectively.
St. Aug's sweeps CIAA Indoor Track crowns
Saint Augustine's relied on its depth in running and jumping events to sweep the 2009 CIAA men's and women indoor track and field championships Saturday (Feb. 14) at the Freeman Center on Christopher Newport University's campus.
Both victories came easily for Saint Augustine's College, which won its 39th CIAA indoor crown in school history including 24 men's titles and 15 women's championships. In the men's standings, the Falcons scored 228 points followed by Bowie State (65), Virginia Union (43), Virginia State (41), Johnson C. Smith (18), Saint Paul's (12) and Livingstone (6). In the women's events, the Lady Falcons scored 153 points followed by Virginia State, (69), Bowie State (69), Johnson C. Smith (60), Virginia Union (7) and Saint Paul's (4).
Middle distance runner Chayce Smith and jumper Joe Kindred paced the Falcon men's team, who won 10 of 14 events, and jumper Andrea Powell led the Lady Falcons. Smith was named men's track MVP and Kindred was selected men's field MVP while Powell earned women's field MVP. Kindred, last year's Division II national men's outdoor field athlete of the year, won his third straight league MVP award. Shermaine Williams of Johnson C. Smith prevented a Falcon sweep as she was named women's track MVP after winning the 60 meter hurdles and finishing second in the 60 and 200 meters.
Smith placed second in the 800-meter run and one-mile run, and third in the 5,000-meter run to score 22 points while Kindred won the high jump and finished second in the long jump and triple jump to score 26 points for the Falcons, the defending NCAA Division II national indoor champions
Cooper-Dyke finalist for Basketball Hall of Fame
Prairie View A&M women's basketball
coach Cynthia Cooper-Dyke is officially a finalist
for induction into the Naismith Memorial
Basketball Hall of Fame and she could arguably be joining the best group
of inductees of all time with the likes of Michael Jordan,
David Robinson, John Stockton and C. Vivian
Stringer also being named finalists for the class
of 2009.
"It feels great to be considered a finalist and the first thing I thought of is how proud my mother would be if she was still here," said Cooper Dyke, whose Lady Panthers lead the SWAC race with two weeks left in the regular season.
Cooper-Dyke's induction would be the final exclamation point on an unbelievable playing career that included numerous accomplishments. She was a four-year letter winner at guard for USC from 1982-86 and led the Trojans to back-to-back NCAA tournament titles in 1983 and 1984 and closed out her collegiate career with an appearance in the 1986 NCAA tournament championship game and a spot on the NCAA Final Four All-Tournament Team. Cooper-Dyke ranks eighth on USC's all-time scoring list with 1,559 points, fifth in assists (381) and third in steals (256).
She started her professional career in Europe in 1986 and represented the United States proudly in the Olympic Games in 1988 and 1992. She returned to the United States to play in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) in 1997 with the Houston Comets. She made a profound impact on the league leading the Comets to four consecutive WNBA titles and retired as the franchises all-time leading scorer with 2,601 points.
Cooper Dyke began her collegiate coaching career in 2005 after being named head women's basketball coach at Prairie View. She recently coached the team to back-to-back regular season conference championships, the most wins in school history (22) and a berth to play in the 2008 Women's National Invitational Tournament (WNIT). More impressively, in only her second season she was named SWAC co-coach of the year after leading the Lady Panthers to their first winning season in program history. The team won the conference tournament in 2007 and advanced to play in the NCAA Women's Basketball Championship.
Cooper-Dyke is considered a basketball icon as a player and has already starting making progress toward becoming a coaching legend.
"I have the same goals as a head coach that I did as a player and as long as you want to be the best, you have to beat the best," said Cooper Dyke. "The reason I took the job at Prairie View is because I wanted to be the second coach ever to take a HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) to the Final Four and I want to go to the Final Four with Prairie View and win a NCAA Championship."
© 2009 Azeez Communications, Inc.