Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 30, 1994 TAG: 9407010003
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Doug Doughty
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Mercer spent his junior year at Goodpasture High School in Madison, Tenn., a Nashville suburb, where he averaged 24 points per game and led his team to a second-place finish in the state.
Mercer first expressed interested in Oak Hill before his sophomore year, Warriors coach Steve Smith said, and is awaiting only the approval of his mother before transferring.
Oak Hill, which lost all five starters from last season's 33-1 team, has added 6-foot-3 Melvin Levett from Cleveland, 5-10 Rob Williams from Johnson City, Tenn., and 6-9 Melvin Whitaker from Garner, S.C. All three were invited to the Nike Festival, which annually showcases the nation's top 100 prospects.
Smith said Levett, who has given an oral commitment to Cincinnati, belongs among the top 10 senior prospects in the country. Williams and 1993-94 Oak Hill guard Shane Carnes played with Mercer on the Tennessee Travelers AAU team.
Mercer, who needs a good year in the classroom to meet NCAA scholarship requirements, is interested in Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Arkansas and Duke.
TECH-BOUND: The Virginia Tech men's basketball staff got some good news when promising signee Shawn Browne got the required 700 with room to spare on the Scholastic Assessment Test.
Browne, a 6-61/2 forward, moved to Montreal from the Caribbean island of St. Vincent when he was 13. He averaged 15.2 points and 6.7 rebounds this past season at Hargrave Military Academy.
COACHING HOTLINE: Pat Kennedy turned down a return to his roots to remain in the ACC as Florida State's basketball coach. Through a university release Wednesday, Kennedy said he would not leave the Seminoles to replace P.J. Carlesimo at Seton Hall in his home state of New Jersey.
Former Virginia Tech basketball player and assistant coach Tic Price has been reunited with former boss Tommy Joe Eagles at the University of New Orleans. Price, briefly out of a job after Eagles was fired at Auburn, had accepted an assistant's position at Creighton.
Lubomir Lichonczak, the Radford University women's basketball coach, has withdrawn from consideration for the opening at Texas A&M, where he once served as an assistant.
CHANGE OF HEART: Castlewood High School pitching phenom Denny Wagner, once thought to be headed to Radford, has accepted a scholarship from Virginia Tech. Wagner, a right-hander, was an 18th-round draft pick of the New York Yankees.
KEYDET DRAFTED: Marc Phillips became the first VMI baseball player in four years to be drafted when he was selected by the Kansas City Royals in the 30th round.
Phillips, from Waynesboro, compiled a 9-23 pitching record in four years at VMI, but has the advantages of being tall (6-3) and left-handed. He had 56 strikeouts in 721/3 innings this past season.
Shawn Knight, selected in the 13th round of the baseball draft by the San Diego Padres, has agreed to a contract that will allow him to return for his final season of football at William and Mary.
It was similar to an arrangement the Padres made for Duke-bound basketball star Trajan Langdon. Knight, a quarterback, set an NCAA Division I-AA record last year for passing efficiency.
TRANSFER TALK: Mike Powell, a little-used freshman guard at Virginia, is expected to transfer to Loyola (Md.), where former Cavaliers assistant Brian Ellerbe is the new head coach.
CONFERENCE MATTERS: The Southern Conference has postponed indefinitely a plan under which the championships in all of its spring sports would have been held on the same weekend in April 1995 in Chattanooga, Tenn.
Problems included a lack of some facilities required for the track and field championships and a conflict with a major invitational golf tournament.
North Carolina won 11 of a possible 23 ACC championships this year - most in school history and, according to preliminary research, the most by any school in any conference in one year. The Tar Heels won seven ACC titles in 1992-93.
SHOAF SERVICES: The family of former Virginia football player and boxer Buddy Shoaf is accepting visitors at its home on Lewis Mountain Road in Charlottesville at noon today following private funeral services.
Shoaf, 69, died Tuesday morning at University of Virginia Hospital. Plagued by circulatory problems in recent years, he was admitted to Martha Jefferson Hospital with internal bleeding before being transferred in the middle of the night.
``It was a shock to me,'' Roanoke insurance executive Bolling Izard said after learning of Shoaf's death. ``I boxed with Buddy in college. He was the light heavyweight and I boxed heavyweight. I used to tell him, `Take it easy on 'em,' because he never left me enough time to warm up.''
SMALL COLLEGES: Mike Goforth, most recently the head athletic trainer at William Fleming High School in Roanoke, has accepted a similar position at Tusculum College in Greeneville, Tenn. Goforth, an East Tennessee State graduate, worked on the training staff at Virginia Tech while pursuing a master's degee in sports management.
by CNB