Friday, June 27, 2008 11:13 PM CDT
Doughty checking out his candidates at EIU basketball camp
By BRIAN NIELSEN, Sports Editor
bnielsen@jg-tc.com
CHARLESTON — On more than one occasion Jamel Johnson grabbed a defensive rebound and dribbled the length of the court the speed and power of a Division I college football prospect for a driving layup.
“He was physically able to dominate,” Johnson’s Charleston basketball coach Trevor Doughty said. “He would have had a harder time against the other group.”
Those tests for seniors-to-be like Johnson and younger Trojans with some high expectations as play continues today and Sunday at Eastern Illinois’ high school basketball team camp.
A day after he and his brother Mario were on Eastern’s campus on a football recruiting visit, the 6-foot-6 Jamel Johnson was back at EIU on Friday to lead the Charleston Red team to a 40-27 win over the Evansville (Ind.) Reitz team listed as its junior varsity.
Then Reitz’s varsity, playing in the Blue Division posted a 64-27 rout over a younger Charleston team playing in the Varsity Silver Division.
Among the round robin games scheduled for today is a showdown of the two Charleston teams at 6 p.m.
That could be preview of plenty of intrasquad competition next winter for the Trojans, whose coach at this point said he has a hard time separating starters from reserves.
For the sake of the team camp that is to run through Sunday’s tournament, Doughty’s Red unit has seven players entering their senior year- Johnson, Derek Hennig, Dylan Rose, Ryan Hale, Sean Parker, Blake Craft and Christian Hupp.
Charleston’s varsity Gold team has incoming juniors Brad Wheeler, Jason Lord and Dylan Doughty, sophomore Joey Miller and freshmen-to-be Colin Ferguson and T.J. Bell.
The fact that Doughty has already received inquiries from college coaches – including former Eastern guard Jack Owens now an assistant at Purdue – about Bell and that his classmate Ferguson stands around 6-7 adds intrigue to the coming season.
The Trojans also have three teams playing in the freshman-sophomore division keeping Doughty as well as assistant coaches Jim Wood and Brad Oakley busy this weekend.
So plenty of players are getting seen by coaches while the freshman phenoms Ferguson and Bell already have shown enough ability to leap into the varsity picture.
Those two and their Charleston Gold teammates learned they are not invincible quiet yet when facing the Reitz varsity.
“We have a lot of work to do but hopefully we will get better this weekend,” Doughty said. “We’ve got a lot of people coming for spots. We’ll probably have that all season. I couldn’t divide it into varsity and JV. I didn’t want to put a varsity team of 10 guys on it. I wanted everyone to get more playing time. One problem is we have three kids who haven’t been part of the varsity program. We’re very inexperienced all the way through.”
Johnson is the only starter back from an 8-20 season.
The Trojans might already be ahead of last year’s pace having a win in the EIU varsity camp after going 0-8 last summer.
Summer wins do not guarantee winter trophies but these games could help Doughty form more of an idea of who could be playing.
“The positive is we should have a lot of competition for spots which should make everyone better,” Doughty said.
Charleston is the only JG/T-C area team represented in the EIU camp that includes five varsity Blue Division teams, seven Silver Division teams and 10 freshman-sophomore teams.
Playing for Charleston in the camp at the fresh-soph division are:
Red team: Michael VanPopering, Alex Shick, Evan Clark, Gunnar Brimner, Quintin Davis and Skylar McNeil;
Gold team: Jordan Hays, Tanner Bartlett, Aaron Bence, Dalton Hite, Robert Gordon and Tibet Spencer;
White team: Dakota Jones, Tevin Brookins, Donovan Brandt, Jay Daniels, Tommy Long and Calvin Bertrand.
Contact Brian Nielsen at bnielsen@jg-tc.com or 238-6856.
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