While their alma mater plays the early portion of its 2009-2010 schedule amid the hype and stress of an unprecedented national No. 1 ranking, former Central Florida stars Ricardo Lewis and Marvin Dibble have their own expectations to deal with at the four-year level.
Valdosta State, led in part by seniors Lewis (left) and Dibble (right), open their season tonight ranked fourth in the The Sporting News' poll of NCAA Division II schools and seventh by the National Association of Basketball Coaches. And their coach, Mike Helfer, has dealt with it in a rather draconian fashion. The attention, the hype and the expectations are all new to a team that’s usually overshadowed by the school’s football program. To help his team stay humble and focused, VSU head basketball coach Mike Helfer has issued a gag order to his team. No player or coach is allowed to talk about preseason rankings.
Seems like a bit of an overreaction - they're fourth and seventh, after all, not first - but a coach knows his team better than anyone else. And it seems to be working. I've covered Lewis since his senior year at Lake Weir High School here in Ocala, and I've never seen him so readily agree to not talk.
“I respected that,” Lewis said about the gag order. “There’s nothing really to talk about. It’s the preseason.”
Nice piece of senior leadership from the PG, there. It always helps when a team's best players buy in to what the coach is selling. Lewis, by the way, has his own expectations to live up to - he's a preseason first-team All-Gulf South Conference selection along with teammate. One more item of interest: Valdosta's other all-conference choice is Tyrone Curnell, a senior power forward who once played for the now-defunct Seminole Community College program.
