Blue Collar Bearkat
3/10/2011 8:14:00 AM | Men's Basketball
It did not take long for the unfair comparisons of last season's Sam Houston State team to be thrust upon this year's squad.
In fact, there was a time when a lot of people felt that the 2010-11 Bearkats would be lucky to finish around .500 and that a return trip to the Southland Conference tournament was out of the question.
After all, last year's team was one of the best in SLC history. Sam Houston rolled to a regular-season championship and capped the season with a near upset of Baylor in the opening round of the NCAA tournament.
The current group of Bearkats started conference with only two wins in their first six Southland games, a far cry from the 11-0 beginning last season.
"This year's team and last year's team are totally different," Bearkats senior Lance Pevehouse said. "First off, we have new players, a new coach and a new system. Everything is totally different. At the beginning of the year, everybody was trying to compare us to last year. We are different."
Everything seemed to come easy for Sam Houston last season. The Bearkats had a high-scoring offense to go along with the usual solid defense and ran a lot of teams out of the gym. Winning an SLC regular-season and tournament title was pretty much a forgone conclusion.
The expectations for Sam Houston this season were sky high again. The Kats returned a solid core of players, including Pevehouse and seniors Josten Crow and Gilberto Clavell, who made a huge impact toward punching the school's second trip to the Big Dance.
But there was a steeper hill to climb and a lot of work to be done this season. It did not come easy, yet somehow Sam Houston was able to put it all together, finish in a tie for second in the SLC, win the West Division and earn a top-three seed to the league tournament for the seventh straight season.
One has to look no further than at a guy like Pevehouse to see why the Bearkats are back in familiar territory heading into today's tilt with Stephen F. Austin in the opening round of the SLC tournament at the Merrell Center in Katy. The Kats and Jacks tip off at 2:30 p.m. today.
"A lot of times, you don't measure what a guy like Lance brings to a team as far as statistics," first-year SHSU head coach Jason Hooten said. "He hasn't had an eye-popping year as far as stats go, but he brings so much more."
Pevehouse is a blue-collar type of player. Sure, he has games when he can dominate the box score like his final contest at Johnson Coliseum when he scored a career-high 25 points on 7-of-10 shooting from 3-point range in a 68-52 drubbing of Texas State.
Every night is not like that. One thing that can be counted on is Pevehouse is going to give 100 percent every time he takes the court.
A huge spark off the bench for last year's team, Pevehouse had to take on a bigger role as a starter this season. He got off to a slow start shooting the ball, but he made up for it with his hustle.
Pevehouse is that guy who does not think twice about diving on the floor for a rebound to keep a play alive. He can find the open man with an extra pass, and even if the shots aren't falling, he does not shy away when his number is called.
Oh, and he also developed into one of the top defenders in the conference.
"That is my goal - if I'm not doing one thing good, you can always hustle, dive for balls on the ground and play defense to help out," Pevehouse said. "My shots were not falling early and for me to be able to stay in the game, I felt I needed to contribute some other way. So I concentrated on other areas and that has helped me out a lot."
As Pevehouse kept chugging away, so did the Bearkats. Sam Houston finally began to take shape of the type of team it needed to be.
Like one of their senior captains, the Kats became a hard-nosed unit that threw out the razzle dazzle and rolled up their sleeves.
Pevehouse found his groove, bumping his scoring average over double digits in SLC play, and Sam Houston won eight of its last 10 games, including three in a row to become one of the hottest teams heading into Katy.
Along with Clavell and Crow, Hooten knew he had a perfect group of seniors to keep the ship steady while everything fell into place.
"One of the first things I said when I got this job was how crucial it was to have those three guys," Hooten said. "Clavell is going to get double- and triple-teamed, but to have guys like Crow and Lance be able to step up and make plays just relaxes the rest of the team.
"We have went through the normal ups and downs, trials and tribulations that every team goes through, but when you have three guys like that, it was only a matter of time before it all came together."
This Sam Houston team wants to make its own name for itself. Last year's success has been hanging over the Bearkats like a big shadow all season, and just might be the motivation needed to do something the 2009-10 team can never do - make it to the NCAA tournament for a second straight season.
"Our biggest motivation? Probably everybody saying we can't," Pevehouse said. "Everybody is trying to compare us to last year. That has motivated everybody to give it all they have to show people what we can do. Hopefully this week we will show that."
