THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 1, 1996 TAG: 9603010589
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE CARLSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 104 lines
Mark Poag remembers playing basketball constantly with his brothers and friends while growing up, and said he was always a good scorer.
But Poag vividly remembers the day his father turned him into a shooter.
``He took me out there when I was real young and told me if I was going to shoot the basketball, I was going to shoot it right,'' Poag said.
If you want to teach a child to shoot a basketball, stress things like how to square up, the importance of keeping the shooting elbow in tight, release the ball high and follow through.
Or, just have the kid watch Poag on television this weekend when Old Dominion plays in the Colonial Athletic Association tournament and say ``do that.''
``He's got a picture-perfect jump shot, just the way you would teach it,'' ODU coach Jeff Capel said. ``It's absolutely perfect.''
For the Monarchs to have a shot to win the CAA tournament, Poag is going to have to be making his. Since Poag became a regular starter in January, he averages almost twice as many points and shoots almost 20 percentage points higher in ODU wins than he does when the Monarchs lose.
ODU was 4-7 when Poag moved into the starting lineup, is 13-5 since.
Thursday night, Poag was honored as the CAA's rookie of the year in balloting by coaches and media members. The Monarchs hope Poag is himself this weekend. He has battled the flu and a sinus infection since Saturday. Poag said he didn't eat Monday or Tuesday, and finally practiced again Wednesday.
``I'm not worried,'' he said Wednesday. ``I've been sicker when I played.''
Poag's 9.8 scoring average - fourth-highest on the team - is deceptive. He was a reserve and played sparingly the first half of the season.
But once Mario Mullen got hurt, Poag emerged as a starter. He's become a focal point of many defenses as teams tried to shut down at least half of ODU's inside (Joe Bunn and Odell Hodge) and outside (Poag) games.
Poag set an ODU freshman record with 74 3-pointers, third-highest in the league. When he squares up to shoot a trey, an undeniable surge of anticipation goes through the crowd at ODU home games.
``Defenses have to pay attention to him when he's on the floor,'' Capel said. ``Without him, we're definitely a different team.''
A few teams have played diamond-and-one defenses, with a chaser on Poag to limit his perimeter shooting.
``You like it because you're getting respect, but on the other hand you don't like it because you're not getting the shots you want,'' Poag said.
Shooting the ball. Poag could do it for hours while growing up.
``If I wasn't in the gym shooting, I was at home shooting or in the park shooting,'' Poag said.
He said he remembers days when - after playing ball all day - he and his brothers and friends would get bored at night. So they would go out and shoot some more until 1 or 2 a.m., trying to keep the ball from bouncing on the pavement so as to not disturb the neighbors.
South-Doyle High School coach Eddie Hodge said on Fridays in football-crazed Knoxville, Tenn., Poag would be in the gym shooting while everyone else was at the football game.
``He might walk out at halftime to see if the home team was winning, and then he'd go back in and shoot some more,'' Hodge said.
Hodge said Poag's father worked his three boys - Mark's two older brothers play at Division III Maryville College outside of Knoxville - hard when it came to basketball.
Half of the Poag family left Corpus Christi, Texas, and moved in with relatives in Knoxville midway through Mark's junior year of high school, partly because of a dispute with Poag's high school coach. Poag's father remained in Corpus Christi, where he owns an insurance business, and came to Knoxville whenever he could.
Hodge said Poag's father once approached him after a game in which Mark struggled and offered an opinion about his son's problem.
``He said to me `You're not letting him shoot far enough out,' '' Hodge said. ``I said, `If I let him shoot any farther away from the basket, he's going to be out of bounds, and it doesn't count when you shoot from out of bounds.' ''
Poag has tremendous range and a pure stroke. But when it comes to defense, he has a scorer's mentality: you get two on me, but I'm going to get three on the other end.
``When he came to me, he'd never played defense in his life,'' Hodge said. ``I'd yell, `Help-side defense,' and he'd look at me like I was speaking Russian.''
``I never used to like to play defense,'' Poag said. ``I was the guy hanging around the free-throw line saying, `Get a rebound, let's go play offense.' ''
Capel said Poag's defense was even more of a liability when he got to Old Dominion, because as a 6-foot-6 high school player he was guarding interior players. Suddenly he was out on the perimeter, trying - sometimes - to guard people coming at him with the ball.
``He still has a long ways to go in that category,'' Capel said.
Capel sometimes calls Poag ``Gomer'' and comes up to him and jokingly says ``Goll-eee,'' a la Gomer Pyle, because of Poag's country-boy demeanor. But on the court, ``Goll-eee'' and other expressions of amazement are elicited by Poag's ability to rain down 3-pointers.
``When he's in rhythm, it's good when it leaves his hand,'' Capel said. ``You can just tell.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MOTOYA NAKAMURA/The Virginian-Pilot
Mark Poag has made 74 3-pointers for the Monarchs, who have a 13-5
record with him in the starting lineup.
by CNB