A note from the desk of Coach Cooper

October 15^th is almost here! All of our players look forward to this date ever year. It marks the first day of official practice. Our guys have been working extremely hard to prepare themselves for the season. Travis Vlantes is our strength and conditioning coach, and he has done a great job with our team to get us ready. Our staff has been working very hard to make our pre-season basketball workouts very challenging for our players. With many new faces, we are still doing a lot of teaching at this point. Our returners are doing a great job of helping our new players develop the habits that we believe make for a successful team.

Lionel Foster, Courtney Carr, David “Chubby” Henderson, and Justin Tubb are our four returning seniors this year. We are counting on these four to quickly step in to a leadership role with this year’s team. Jordan Ashmore and Barrick Hodge are our other two returners.

We have brought in 5 new transfers and 2 true high school players in this year’s recruiting class. Kerry Jones (Hill College), Tyshawn Edwards (Erie CC), Donald Sims (USC-Salkehatchie), Kennon Washington (Faulkner CC), and Mike Bables (TAMUCC) are the transfers we have brought in. Tez Dumars (Lakeview Centennial) and Kevin Waller (Groesbeck) are the two freshman we have brought in. As I have stated before, we are very excited about the guys we have coming in.

A couple of weeks ago our team took a visit to BSA Hospital and visited several children. We also put on a free clinic for kids with the Lady Buffs. Family Pass members brought their kids, and we put them through a one day mini-basketball camp.

If you’ve had a little time to look at our schedule, you will see that 6 of our first 7 games are on the road this year. We have a very challenging schedule this year, and we think that it is the type of schedule that will allow our team improve with every contest. Our conference schedule will be a little different this year with the realignment. We open conference on December 1^st at Incarnate Word, and then travel over to take on TAMU-Kingsville. The league is very talented this year, and anyone could come out on top.

As always, I will never make any predictions about this year’s team. How quickly we gel together and buy in to the things important to Buff Basketball will determine our success this year. We are having our annual “Meet the Buffs and Lady Buffs” on November 6^th at the First United Bank Center. We would love for you guys to join us in the Buffalo Room at 7:00pm. Coach Gerlich and I would love for you to come out and meet our teams. More information will be on our website soon.

A note from the desk of Coach Cooper

Well I can’t believe another school year is already beginning! I am very excited about the 2011-2012 Buff Basketball team that will represent our University this year. All of our players have made it in and are already in classes. Friday, August 26^th, we had our entire team at the 2011 Buffalo Club Golf Classic. A special thanks goes to Jimmy Fincher, as he sponsored our hole at the classic. This is a big weekend for our fall sports, and we are very excited to go out and support them, starting with our football team tomorrow!

We have also made a new addition to our staff for the upcoming year. Kolby Huseman has joined our staff as a graduate assistant. He is coming to us after spending the past year at Texas Tech University in a similar position. We are very excited about what Kolby will bring to our staff. K. C. Beard, who was our graduate assistant for the past two years, graduated with his Master’s Degree in Business Administration. He will join Tim Cleary’s staff at Pacific University, which is located in Portland, Oregon. I know that K. C. is very excited to move back closer to his family, and also join a longtime friend in coaching. We are really going to miss him. Vinay Patel is back for another year! I can’t believe that he is starting his 7^th year with me on the coaching staff. He has done a great job helping us put together this year’s team. Wayne Parker is coming back for his 3^rd year as my student assistant. I can’t begin to explain how much Wayne has meant to this program. We are very fortunate to have him back this year.

We had a great recruiting class, and combined with the experience we have back, it should make for an exciting year! I will go more into detail about the players we have added, and our schedule in my next blog. We are very anxious to get started with our preseason workouts and begin efficiently using the time we have from now until our first official practice on October 15th to improve as a basketball team!

The Buff Facts, with Lady Buff Basketball players Ashley Leven, Ariel Robertson and Aly Sherman

GoBuffsGo.com is proud to bring you, “The Buff Facts” – a brief Q&A session with Buff and Lady Buff players. Throughout the various athletic seasons, the West Texas A&M Athletics Media Relations staff will sit down with coaches and student-athletes for an insight into the their respective programs.

This week we sat down with Lady Buff Basketball Players Ashley Leven, Ariel Robertson and Aly Sherman. Let’s get to know your Lady Buffs!

Ashley Leven
Junior, education major
Forward
Amarillo, Texas

Ariel Robertson
Redshirt Freshman, sports and exercise science major
Guard
Cedar Hill, Texas

Aly Sherman
Junior, sports and exercise science major
Guard/Forward
Mt. Vernon, Texas

What is your all-time favorite movie?
Ashley Leven – “A Walk to Remember”
Ariel Robertson – Pretty much any “chick-flick”.
Aly Sherman – “The Hangover”

What is one meal you could eat for the rest of your life?
AL – Sloppy Joe’s
AR – Steak
AS – Macaroni & cheese, steak, green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy.

If you could play another sport for WT, what would it be?
AL – I will have to go with golf also.
AR – Golf… Because you don’t have to run.
AS – Volleyball

What was your favorite subject in high school?
AL – Athletics
AR – Math
AS – Math

If you were stranded on an island, with just one person – who would it be?
AL – Ariel Robertson
AR – Ashley Leven
AS – My boyfriend, Kevin.

What made you choose WT?
AL – I am close to home. I am a homebody and I like being able to go home to my family at anytime. WT is a winning program and I have great teammates and coaches.
AR – WT has a great program.
AS – With the help from God.

In the next 10 years, you will be…?
AL – Teaching second graders and raising a family.
AR – Curing someone’s illness.
AS – A P.E. teacher for fifth and sixth graders.

A note from the desk of Coach Cooper

The Buff Basketball team has moved to 4-0 on this very young season. Last night we beat a very good Panhandle State team. I was really proud of our guys for going out on the road and performing at a very high level. If we can continue to get the effort that we got last night, this could be a really fun team to watch. We shot the ball a lot better than we had all year, and our rebounding effort improved from our last game against Wayland.

This is a big week for us in that we will face our first two LSC opponents. We have Cameron on Thursday, and SWOSU on Saturday. Cameron is coming off of a huge win at home against Tarleton and are 5-0 on the year. It is going to be a very tough game for us. Cameron does an excellent job of rebounding the basketball, and are a very well coached team.

Southwestern Oklahoma State is coached by Charlie Schaef. Coach Schaef is a great friend of mine, and worked with me at WT for several years. He is a tremendous coach, and his team has won 5 games in a row. They have good guards, and very good size inside.

We have our work cut out for us this week, but we are going to take it one game at a time. We look forward to seeing all of you at the First United Bank Center on Thursday at 6:00pm for the Lady Buffs home opener against Cameron, and then our game at 8:00pm.

A note from the desk of Coach Cooper

With our recent win over Wayland Baptist University, we have improved our record to 3-0 on the year. It was definitely an early November game. Alex Davis led us in scoring with 21 and Lionel Foster led our team in assists with 7. We were very disappointed with our rebounding on the evening. WBU outrebounded us 40-19 for the game. We do think we are improving defensively each game.

Our next game will be against Oklahoma Panhandle State on the 29th. We will be traveling to Goodwell, Oklahoma for the game, and I hope that our returners will remember what happened last year when we traveled up there. We have already begun to prepare for OPSU, but know that we have a lot to improve on as a basketball team.

If you get a chance to come out and watch us play in Goodwell, tip off is at 8:00pm. I hope that everyone has a very Happy Thanksgiving!

A note from the desk of Coach Cooper

It was a great weekend for the Buffs. We came home from Bartlesville, Oklahoma with a 2-0 record. Our team won two very hard fought games over Emporia and Newman. Both teams are very well coached and should have a great year.

We opened up Friday against Emporia State. They are very tough to defend with what they run offensively. I was very pleased with our defensive effort on the night. We had to overcome a 12 point deficit to give ourselves a chance to win the game. With the game tied, Lionel Foster found Rod Little on the perimeter for a 3 pointer to win the game. I was very proud of the team for fighting back from being down and putting themselves in position to win the game. It was a typical November basketball game with lots of mistakes.

On Saturday we played Newman University. Coach Potter does an excellent job with his kids. They have two of the nations best 3 point shooters. I knew it would be a tough game for both teams, especially having to play back to back nights so early in the year. I really thought we came together as a team defensively towards the end of the game and the overtime. We strung some key defensive stops together to give ourselves a chance in overtime. I was really proud of our rebounding effort on the night, and our ability to hit free throws late in the game. We went 13-15 from the free throw line in the overtime.

We are going to work right away to work on several things from this weekend. We as a staff and a basketball team know in order to keep improving as a team, we must begin eliminating our mistakes and capitalizing on our opponents mistakes. With that being said, I am still extremely proud of the effort this team displayed this weekend. We will be playing Wayland Baptist on Friday for our home opener, and then we have 10 days until we play at Oklahoma Panhandle State.

A note from the desk of Coach Cooper

I am very pleased with the effort our team has shown through our first several practices. We hosted our annual Coaching Clinic on October 17th, and once again it was very successful! There were over 100 high school coaches in attendance to listen to our speakers and watch us and the Lady Buffs practice. I felt that all of the speakers did a great job! One of the speakers was a former player and assistant coach of mine, Tim Thomas.

Yesterday we had our first scrimmage. I was very proud of their effort, but we have a lot of things to improve on. We use our scrimmages as a teaching opportunity. This gives us a chance to sit our players down and point out certain aspects of the game we feel they can improve on, and also aspects that they were very successful on. We use film for not just a teaching tool, but also for our game preparation. Our staff does a tremendous job of using film to improve our team.

We have two more scrimmages before our first game against Emporia. We are working to continue to eliminate errors, and improve our intensity as a basketball team. If this team continues to put in the effort that they have up to this point, I will be very happy as a basketball coach.