Bowling Green State University Athletics
BG Looks for Wright Answer
October 18, 2005 | Men's Basketball
Oct. 18, 2005
By JACK CARLE, Sentinel Sports Editor - With seven newcomers listed on the preseason roster, Dan Dakich knows he has his work cut out for him this season with the Bowling Green men's basketball team.
Now he has to start drills without Steven Wright, a 6-feet-3 guard, who was the team's third-leading scorer a year ago.
Wright started all 29 games last season and averaged 11.0 points, 3.8 rebounds and 1.3 steals per game.
However, Wright is sidelined after coming down wrong on his left foot in a pickup game last month. He had surgery to place a screw in his foot to repair a broken fifth metatarsal bone.
"It will be a minimum of six weeks before he plays and he's already in week 2 1/2," Dakich said Thursday afternoon. BG starts drills tonight at 7 in Eppler Center, as there is a Falcon volleyball game in Anderson Arena.
Wright could be ready for BG's season opener against Western Carolina on Nov. 11 in the NABC Classic in Blacksburg, Va. An injury such as Wright's takes anywhere from four to 12 weeks to heal.
"I feel it's progressing real good," Wright said. "I've been getting a lot of treatment on it, like range of motion."
Wright said he is very frustrated because of the injury.
"I had worked out all summer with all the guys and now they are progressing and working hard and I'm on the sidelines," Wright said.
MOTEN IN WAIT: Brian Moten, a 6-4 freshman from Saginaw, Mich., is currently enrolled as a part-time student at Bowling Green. The plan is for Moten to take the SAT and ACT tests and become eligible in December.
"When he gets the score, he'll be eligible on the 17th (of December) which is when we go play down in Alabama," Dakich said. "If you're not enrolled in 12 hours, you're a part-time student and if you're not a full-time student, your academic clock (for eligibility) does not start.
"He had good enough grades and he had enough tests, but the combination of the two didn't get him qualified," Dakich added.
Moten is basically following the same academic path as Keith McLeod, a former Falcon standout who is now with the Utah Jazz. McLeod did not play during the fall semester of the 2001-02 academic year and became eligible in December. He went on to become the second-leading scorer in school history.
Moten was one of the top players in Michigan after averaging 28 points, five rebounds and four assists a game as a senior in 2003-04 at Arthur Hills High School in Saginaw.
He had originally committed to Western Michigan and then Virginia, but was a non-qualifier. He attended prep schools in Cincinnati and in Michigan last year.
Dakich said Moten cannot work out with the team or be in any basketball-related meetings this fall.
SOLER IN LIMBO: Mawel Soler, a 6-5 senior, is not practicing with the team. He played with the Falcons last season after spending two years at Coffeyville (Kan.) Community College.
"My senior is working his way back to be on the team," Dakich said. "I learned two years ago that I have to trust the senior. If the senior doesn't trust me, I don't care, but I've got to trust them.
"At this point right now he won't start practicing with us. I give him credit. He's working hard to regain that trust."
When asked about Soler's problems, Dakich said "while the team's agenda is to practice, his agenda is to be somewhere else, doing something else."
OPENER: In addition to Western Carolina, Bowling Green faces Virginia Tech and Radford in the NABC Classic.
"We wanted a tournament that quite frankly, wasn't going to cost us a lot of money and they were going to pay for it," Dakich said. "I wanted a tournament where we were going to play three games.
"I wanted this group to jump right into it," he added.
NEW RULES: Bowling Green took advantage of the new NCAA rule which allows workouts as a team before the official start of practice. Previously, the sessions were allowed with only four players.
The full workouts have helped the young Falcon squad learn what Dakich expects during the season.
"It's a team which doesn't know how to do the simplest of drills to this point. But when we do things one day, the next day they pick them all up and having them going pretty good. It works out well," Dakich said. "We got lucky with the new rules allowing full access to the team. What we did the last two weeks and yesterday (Wednesday), we just practiced as a team to get them acclimated to what it's like."
SCRIMMAGES: Bowling Green has scrimmages with Duquesne and Wright State before the start of the regular season.
