LITTLE ROCK — Forgive Arkansas State men’s basketball Coach John Brady if he doesn’t sound bowled over after his Red Wolves were picked by conference coaches to win the Sun Belt Conference West Division.
“We’re a good enough basketball team,” Brady said during the conference media day Wednesday. “The one thing that can keep us from accomplishing what we want to accomplish is poor decisions and not conducting ourselves in the proper way.”
After losing three seniors from a squad that claimed the division title last season, the clout shifts inside the lane this season, where three returning forwards must stabilize a roster featuring six newcomers.
The departure of guards Rashad Allison and Donald Boone along with sixth-man Jeremy Thomas deprives the Red Wolves of 34.6 percent of their scoring, 32.8 percent of their assists and 34.2 percent of shots per game from last season.
Forwards Brandon Peterson, Malcolm Kirkland and Martavius Adams, who averaged a combined 23.8 points and 16.2 rebounds per game last season, are expected to fill that void.
“We should be pretty good,” Brady said Wednesday. “We don’t have great players. We have a collection of good players, and if they play unselfish and do things that lend themselves to winning, we can have a good basketball team.”
Of those three forwards, Adams drew the most attention from the league’s coaches, who voted the 6-8, 255-pound senior a preseason All-Sun Belt pick after he averaged 11.1 points and 7.2 rebounds last season. But Brady said his marquee big man has to show consistency that eluded him at times last season.
Adams’ abilities yielded performances such as an 11-point, 11-rebound night in a loss to Memphis or 21 points and seven rebounds in a victory against Louisiana-Monroe. But he had just two points and seven rebounds against Troy and three points and no rebounds against Middle Tennessee.
In fact, when Adams approached Brady in the off season about helping him land a summer job, he was rebuffed.
“All the people I’ll ask to hire you have seen you play,” Brady said. “You don’t play hard enough, so they don’t think you’ll work very hard.”
But Adams appears to have found the proper motivation entering his final season.
“From an effort standpoint, he’s been much better,” Brady said. “He’s in much better shape. He’s got tremendous amounts of strength. He looks like a player that should play at a higher level. He just needs to be more consistent, run the floor a little better.”
Behind Adams, the Red Wolves regain their best perimeter defender and rebounding guard in Trey Finn, who went down in practice with a torn anterior cruciate ligament days before the start of the Sun Belt Tournament. Now Finn is rounding into form, Brady said.
“We’re bringing him along slowly,” Brady said. “But I think he’ll be ready to go by the start of the season.”
Junior guard Adam Stereberg has added 20 pounds to his 6-3 frame and could slide into one guard spot alongside Edward Townsel, who backed up Allison at point guard last season and averaged 4.8 points and 1 assist in 14.5 minutes per game.
“He needs to improve his assist-to-turnover ratio,” Brady said of Townsel. “But as far as his quickness, his speed, and a good enough shooter from the perimeter, he’ll be a good point guard for us.”
Meanwhile, expectations were tempered for the Red Wolves in-state rival.
UALR was picked fifth in the West Division by the conference coaches, the loss of three senior guards in Alex Garcia-Mendoza, Matt Mouzy and Solomon Bozeman - the league’s player of the year - looming large.
“I’m not surprised at all,” UALR Coach Steve Shields said. “Our point is just to get better at practice every day, and it’s important that we don’t have wasted days.”
Garcia-Mendoza, Mouzy and Bozeman provided nearly 48.9 percent of UALR’s scoring and took 43.6 percent of the shots for a squad that went 19-17 and reeled off four victories in four days to win the program’s first conference tournament crown en route to an NCAA Tournament berth.
With nine newcomers - including six freshmen - expectations have been lowered.
Senior point guard D’Andre Williams, who averaged 6.7 points and 3.3 assists last season, landed on the coaches’ all-conference third team.
Sports, Pages 17 on 10/27/2011