Page 30 - Florida Sentinel 10-9-15 Edition

Sports
BCU Wildcats Play Tonight (Thursday) On ESPNU Against S. C. State
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Bethune-Cookman welcomes South Carolina State to Munic- ipal Stadium aka “The Cage” Thursday night for an ESPNU prime time showdown with Mid-Eastern Athletic Confer- ence title implications on the line in Daytona Beach. The game is set for a 7:30 p.m. kick- off, while the game has been tagged a BLACKOUT contest for the Wildcats and all their fans.
Thursday night’s game marks the second of three consecutive 2014 Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) Co-Cham- pions that fellow co-champion Bethune-Cookman will face in the 2015 season.
Since 2005, B-CU has played in eight ESPNU Thurs- day night contests. The Wild- cats hold a record of 5-3 in those games, including a 1-1
Former Jefferson High star QB Quentin Williams will lead the Wildcats against S.C. State.
mark at Norfolk State and Hampton a season ago.
South Carolina State leads the series against the Wildcats of Bethune-Cookman by a count of 31-21-1.
A win over S. C. State would Extend Bethune-Cookman’s winning streak to five games and allow B-CU to start MEAC play at 3-0 for the fourth con- secutive year.
FAMU’s Football Team Has More Problems Than Losing; Team Is Being Sanctioned Due To Academics
FAMU’s football team is off to its second 0-5 start in the last two years, is under Level Two NCAA sanctions stem- ming from low multi-year Aca- demic Progress Rate scores. The Rattlers’ basketball and men’s track programs also are under sanctions. But it’s the football program fans are hop- ing to see return to prominence sooner rather than later. Later is more likely.
FAMU’s sanctions mean the team can’t practice in the spring and typically has to skip Monday practice due to re- stricted fall hours.
The group is also banned from the postseason.The next step would be Level Three sanctions. There are only two
FAMU Football
football programs in the nation under Level Three sanctions for the 2015-2016 season.The first is Alabama State. The other is conference foe Savan- nah State — the team that on Saturday defeated Florida A&M 37-27 for its first win since 2013.
Kobe Bryant Says His Age 37 Is Not Like Michael Jordan’s Age 37
Alcorn State Tops With Coaches, Media
Talladega College Men’s Basketball Team Ranked In NAIA Top 10 By Sporting News
Alcorn State is the top team in the BOXTOROW coaches and media polls.
The Braves had a resound- ing 61-14 victory over Arkansas-Pine Bluff in Little Rock on Saturday, the fourth win in a row for the Braves. N. C. A&T got past Hampton 45- 31.
Alcorn State received all but one first-place vote in the coaches poll.
Bethune-Cookman who de- feated North Carolina Central 28-26 on the road and Ten- nessee State both moved up a spot this week to No. 3 and No. 4, respectively, aided by South Carolina State’s 17-3 loss to Furman, which dropped the Bulldogs to No. 5.
Morgan State and Norfolk State both won on the road – the Bears defeating Delaware State 26-6 and the Spartans coming from behind to defeat
Alcorn State
Howard 15-12 – and moved into the top 10, MSU at No. 9 and NSU tied for No. 10 with North Carolina Central.
In the media poll, ASU un- seats N. C. A&T, who has sat atop the media poll for four of the first five weeks. It marks the first time this year that the Braves are No. 1 with the media.
South Carolina State fell two spots to No. 5. Tuskegee lost for the first time this year and fell three spots to No. 8.
KOBE BRYANT And MICHAEL JORDAN
Once again, Kobe Bryant‘s career arc is being compared to Michael Jordan’s.
There’s a lot of reason’s that’s flawed — starting with Kobe being drafted on to a Lakers team that had Shaquille O’Neal and was already considered NBA elite, as opposed to Jordan work- ing to build a franchise up. That said, Kobe has invited the Jordan comparison at times and it has been a con- stant through is career. Fair or not.
Kobe is coming back this fall after seasons of injury and those Jordan comparisons will not go away — just that now it’s to the Wizards’ ver- sion of Jordan. And Kobe is not at all fond of that, he said.
“This is uncharted territory,” he said. “My 37 (years old) isn’t MJ’s 37 (when he re- turned after taking two sea- sons off to play for the Washington Wizards), you know what I mean? Nor is it the same team or the same system that he was playing in. It’s much, much different.
There’s really no barometer, no (precedent) for training physically, for recovery. It’s uncharted territory.”
Kobe is right, starting with Jordan was retired at age 37 (he came back at 38). Also, Jordan had four+ seasons off by the time he was 38 and was not coming off multiple major surgeries.
Kobe is entering his 20th NBA season and what any real basketball fan should wish for him is health. Let him play one full season (with limited min- utes and nights off), let him get to the final game of this season next April and make his own decision on his future. Let him leave the game on his own terms.
That said, if Kobe can aver- age Jordan’s numbers at that age — 22.9 points, 5.7 re- bounds and 5.2 assists per game — it will be a major ac- complishment, and the Lakers will have a better record than many of us expect.
And Kobe may want to play a 21st season as well.
Talladega College Men’s Bas- ketball Team
The 2015-16 Basketball Pre- view by the Sporting News ranks Talladega as the tenth best team in NAIA Division I this season in their Small Col- lege Report.
Talladega College made his- tory last season. The Torna- does won 32 games in the 2014-15 season, along with the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference regular season and tournament titles; the first time in program history the program had com- pleted the feat. The 32 wins were a school record and con- tained within them a 20-game win streak, the longest in the nation last season.
In the midst of that win streak, the Tornadoes rose to the top of the NAIA Division I men's basketball rankings, an- other program first. After tak- ing their second consecutive GCAC tournament crown, Tal- ladega ran through the bracket at the Buffalo Funds-NAIA Di- vision I Men's Basketball cham- pionship advancing their way to the Fab Four for the first time in school history. The sea- son ended with a loss to even- tual champion Dalton State in the national semi-finals, but Talladega would end the season ranked second overall.
Even after losing a host of tal- ented players, including All- Americans Brandon Peters and Shondel Stewart, the Tor- nadoes have their sights on the ultimate prize. Talladega Head Coach Matt Cross believes his program is poised to claim a national championship, the first for a historically black col- lege or university since Texas Southern won the crown in 1977.
"Last year was special", said Coach Cross. "When I came back here (in 2012) for my sec- ond stint at Talladega I had a five year plan to win a national championship. We've set that as a goal for this program and we feel like we're right on schedule to be able to compete for a championship again this year."
National News
Michigan Woman Wins $310.5 Million Powerball
She's one lucky lady.
Julie Leach, 50, won the
Michigan Powerball jackpot of $310.5 million -- the state's second-largest winner ever.
Leach came forward on Tuesday to claim her prize, and decided to take the lump sum option of $197.4 million in cash.
She joked that she was going to have her longtime partner, Vaughn Avery, sign a pre- nup. But she added that she plans to take care of her chil- dren and family with her win- nings.
"We used to say if we ever won the lottery, we wanted to buy a whole bunch of land and build all of our kids a home and basically have our own little community."
Julie Leach just won Michi- gan's Powerball jackpot of $310.5 million.
Leach said she bought the tickets on her way into work.
"I worked a [night] shift and at about 6:30 at night I stopped
JULIE LEACH
to get my coffee and bought $20 worth of lottery tickets," Leach said.
She said she'd had a rough night at the fiberglass factory where she's a supervisor, and checked her ticket while on her lunch break at McDonald's.
"I didn't believe it," Leach said. "I had to go back to work and get verified from a couple other coworkers and just couldn't believe it."
Leach said once she was certain she'd won, she quit im- mediately.
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