DATE: Friday, October 31, 1997              TAG: 9710310863

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C7   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY STEVE CARLSON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   52 lines

ODU'S DEFENSE IMPRESSES CAPEL THAT'S A NICE WAY OF SAYING THE OFFENSE WASN'T QUITE THERE.

Old Dominion coach Jeff Capel liked half of what he saw from his team in its first dry run of the season Thursday night at the annual Blue-White intrasquad scrimmage.

The defensive half.

Capel said the offense had repeated breakdowns, gave up on offensive sets before they had time to develop and had too many incidents of guys going one-on-one.

``It was hard to say if the offense was bad because we don't know what we were doing or because the defense was really good,'' Capel said.

``A little sloppy,'' junior forward Mark Poag said. ``Most of the time we've executed a little better at this time of the year.

``We'll get better. The hustle was there.''

That hustle showed up mostly on the defensive end, which was what Capel was most pleased with as he watched from press row at the ODU field house while assistants Mark Cline and Jim Corrigan coached the game.

ODU has just 10 scholarship players available, and they all played 40 minutes except for Skipper Youngblood, who was on the bench for two minutes with a contact problem and was replaced by Clifton Jones, a transfer who is sitting out this season. Capel liked the effort and conditioning the players demonstrated, and was happy with the way they pressured the ball defensively.

``It will be interesting to see how that pans out when we're all together as one team,'' Capel said.

The players switched repeatedly from one team to the other as ODU tried different combinations. Junior post man Reggie Bassette was a presence at both ends of the floor, scoring 22 points to go along with 17 rebounds and four blocked shots.

Forward Poag struggled to find his shooting stroke at first but finished with 22 points and four 3-pointers, while junior-college transfer Curtis Pass had 13 and freshman Michael Williams scored 11. Freshman Paul Reed grabbed 12 rebounds.

Senior point guard Brion Dunlap, suspended from the team for academic reasons earlier this month, had a game-high six assists. He was reinstated on Friday.

``I'm happy to be back,'' Dunlap said. ``I had fun out there, even though we didn't play that well.''

The Monarchs host Global Sports in an exhibition game at 7:35 p.m. Thursday at the field house. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MOTOYA NAKAMURA/The Virginian-Pilot

Skipper Youngblood, left, and Curtis Pass, right, sandwich the

Blue's Mike Byers. The White won 59-52.

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