The Rustorian

Issue date: 2/28/09 Section: Sports

Jarhell Holmes

The Bearcat Men's Basketball team is on the brink of achieving something not done in years. As its stands, the team sits at nine and six, with some key games upcoming, giving them a chance to make or break their aspirations of going to the NCAA tournament. If the team is to accomplish the goal they will have to ride their leading scorer Jarhell Holmes.

Holmes, a sophomore guard from Somerville, Tenn., leads the team in scoring at 16 points a game while shooting a blistering 46 percent from the field. At six-foot-three and weighing 168 pounds, the silky smooth left hand shooter uses an arsenal of long range shooting and outstanding jumping ability to render his opponent defenseless.
Holmes scored a sweltering career high of 42 points against Blue Mountain College.

Holmes said, "I really took it upon myself this summer to hit the gym hard so I could come back and be ready to try and lead this team to the tournament. I'm just glad my hard work is showing and we are winning in the process."

Holmes stated that he watched a lot of basketball this summer especially the Olympics squad and tried to pick up ways of getting his shot off quicker with a hand in his face.

Assistant coach Atu Green said, "We can score with the best of them there is no doubt about that. We have to get the defensive mentality to shut our opponents down and not focus so much scoring the basketball. Offense is going to come but defense is going to win you ball games undoubtedly."

The team is averaging 82.8 points a contest which ranks 23 amongst 394 ranked division three schools but is allowing 82.3 points a game, ranking 373 in the polls. "We have the talent to go pretty far this year it all depends on how hungry our guys are and if they want it bad enough. We cannot play extremely hard one night and lackadaisical the next. We have no room for error," Green said.

According to head coach Rodney Stennis, "We have a good team with good athletes, we just have to blend in all this athletic ability with intelligence on the basketball floor." The Bearcats need to win every game they have left in hopes of going to the NCAA tournament.

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