Keith Richard exited the Jack Stephens Center at 10 p.m. on Jan. 9, his Louisiana-Monroe men's basketball team having just missed by inches on winning a Sun Belt Conference road game.
Three of Richard's players had a chance in the final seconds, but each shot rolled off the rim as UALR escaped with a 58-57 victory. Richard and his team were packed and out of the visitor's locker room in less than 30 minutes, but the coach left with a distinct impression of the new-look Trojans.
UALR MEN VS. GEORGIA SOUTHERN
WHEN 7:15 p.m.
WHERE Jack Stephens Center, Little Rock
RECORDS UALR 17-2, 7-1 Sun Belt; Georgia Southern 7-11, 3-5
SERIES Georgia Southern leads 16-12.
RADIO KKPT-FM, 94.1, in Little Rock
"Something really nice is going on with their team," Richard said this week.
UALR (17-2, 7-1) will host Georgia Southern (7-11, 3-5) at 7:15 p.m. today, having spent almost a month in at least a tie for first place in the Sun Belt standings. The Trojans are off to their best overall start in program history, and a victory over Georgia Southern would give them their best conference start ever.
Sun Belt teams haven't reached the halfway point of the league schedule, but even with 12 games remaining, Richard and other league coaches were in agreement this week on which team has demanded the most praise so far -- even if some have differing reasons as to why.
When asked what stuck out most about UALR's turnaround form last year's 13-18 finish, Georgia Southern's Mark Byington said it's the way first-year Coach Chris Beard has melded six newcomers with seven returnees.
"They have great roles," Byington said. "You have guys who are all-conference-type players in Josh Hagins and Roger Woods -- those guys have accepted smaller roles. For a championship team, guys have to do that."
Texas-Arlington Coach Scott Cross, whose team saw UALR at its peak in the first half of a 68-62 loss Saturday, pointed out the Trojans' defense, which is holding teams to a Division I-best 58.1 points per game.
"They're not going to beat themselves," Cross said. "They're going to make you beat them. If you don't, they're as good as I've seen defensively."
Richard said UALR is "better than anybody in our league" at cutting off easy lanes to the basket.
Beard, hired in the spring from Division II Angelo State, will take the compliments, but he shunned any notion the Trojans have become a league favorite.
"I'm not buying that at all," he said. "That's veteran coaches in the league playing mind games. We're simply trying to win the next game on our schedule. We're trying to get our team better. No, I'm not falling for any of that stuff."
The attention has developed one challenge for Beard -- how to get his players to handle it.
UALR's run has it again gaining votes in the national polls -- it has five in the latest USA Today Coaches Top 25 Poll -- and inclusion in a variety of mock NCAA Tournament brackets. Currently, the Trojans are the Sun Belt's representative for an NCAA berth in tournament projections by ESPN.com, CBSSports.com and SI.com, all of which have them as a No. 12 seed.
Beard doesn't order his team to not look at such things -- "that's not reality," he said -- but he does coach players on how to deal with the attention.
It's a different feeling for Hagins, a senior guard who has experienced one winning season in his first three with the Trojans. But he and a group of experienced teammates, even if some are new to the Trojans, are taking the advice from their coach to heart.
"You can't ignore the fact that you're 7-1 [in the Sun Belt]," said Hagins, who is averaging 12.3 points per game. "We understand every game that a target is going to be on our back. Everyone is coming for us. We're just going to take that challenge."
That's how Beard wants it.
"I just try each day to remind them that we really haven't done anything yet," Beard said. "You've got to validate your last win with your next performance. This team has pretty much embraced that. That's why I think we've had a little bit of early success."
Sports on 01/28/2016