Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, December 4, 1993 TAG: 9312040009
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: scott blanchard
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Coastal Carolina, for example, visits Virginia Tech today with a $20,000 price tag - but not with the "easy-win" guarantee.
The Chanticleers have posted seven consecutive seasons of 20-plus victories and have made two trips to the NCAA Tournament in the past three years. Despite losing their best player, Tony Dunkin, they're picked to win the Big South Conference again this season.
Today's game is a one-shot deal, Tech coach Bill Foster said, not the beginning of a home-and-home series.
The Hokies fed off emotion in a season-opening victory over West Virginia on Nov. 27, and Foster hopes his team doesn't yawn when it takes the court at 1 p.m. today at Cassell Coliseum.
"They're a good team," Foster said of the Chanticleers. "They're used to winning. They're aggressive. They press a lot.
"Unless our guys are not listening, they'll have good respect for Coastal."
\ MISFORTUNE: Tech's Dwayne Archbold seems destined not to play college basketball. A broken finger caused him to miss most of his senior year in high school, and that delay in development helped the Hokies' coaches decide to redshirt him last season. Now, Foster said, the 6-foot-8 forward has been hospitalized with mononucleosis, and it may be six weeks before he's up and around.
That likely shoots down any chance Archbold had of playing much this season.
"He's not a kid that needs to be missing a lot of time," Foster said. "It's just a shame. He was making progress. [This] makes it awful tough."
\ UNCERTAINTY: Foster said guard Shawn Good's mother, who has multiple sclerosis, is "doing a little better right now," but said Good may have to return home to Columbus, Ind., if Angeline Good's condition worsens. Good missed one of Tech's preseason games to be with his mother, whom Foster said is suffering from "complications" associated with MS.
\ PLAY-FOR-PAY: The idea of playing home games at a neutral site for money - such as Virginia Tech did against West Virginia in Landover, Md. - doesn't get support from WVU coach Gale Catlett.
"I agreed with it," he said of Tech's request to move the game from Blacksburg. "[But] we do too many things for TV, too much for promotion, too much for money. I think we're living in an age where that happens all the time to coaches. . . . I think [the Tech-WVU game] should be on our campus. If they came in and said, you can play N.C. State here, for $150,000, on ESPN, we'll take a look at it. We're not going to move a game like Virginia Tech, Pittsburgh, Ohio State. We're just not going to move those games."
by CNB