By Luke DeCock
The (Raleigh) News & Observer
Reprinted with permission
BUIES CREEK -- When Jonathan Rodriguez visited Campbell as a recruit, the arena where he now plays was nothing more than a grassy field. A year later, when Junard Hartley checked out the campus, the steel beams were just starting to climb into the sky.
"They had told me they were going to build it," Rodriguez said. "I was just taking it one day at a time."
Campbell has been doing a lot of building lately. Last season was the Camels' first in the new Pope Convocation Center, a state-of-the-art arena to replace claustrophobic Carter Gym. This season, the basketball team has built on a solid finish to last season with a strong start to this one.
With Rodriguez on Monday becoming the 101st Division I player to record 2,000 points and 1,000 rebounds in his career and Hartley among the national top 20 in assists, and with a win over East Carolina and a narrow loss to Virginia Tech to their credit, the Camels (12-9, 7-5 Atlantic Sun) are as close as they have been to the NCAA Tournament in more than a decade - even after dropping three games in a row.
In a one-bid league like the Atlantic Sun, the conference tournament is all that matters. Having beaten seven of the league's 11 teams, Campbell has as good a shot as anyone.
"I think about it every day," Hartley said. "Every time we practice. Every time we travel to go play a game. Every time before a game, I think NCAA berth, because that's our goal. In order to accomplish it, you have to think about it and visualize yourself being there."
The new building serves as a symbol of the new direction. It isn't huge, at 3,095 seats, but is modern and upscale and everything Carter Gym wasn't. Its biggest impact isn't in home-court advantage or recruiting. It's being able to practice on a cushioned floor, with the doors closed, with the air-conditioning on - which led to three-game and four-game winning streaks at the end of last season.
"I told [Campbell] president [Jerry] Wallace in a discussion last year, 'You may not understand this, but our late-season surge last year came because we had a place where you could really get after it, day in and day out,' " seventh-year Campbell coach Robbie Laing said.
"Those are things everybody else has always taken for granted, but that enabled us to have a chance."
The Camels have only been to the NCAA Tournament once, in 1992, when they lost by 26 to a Duke team that would go on to win the national title. Two years later, Campbell won 20 games for the eighth time in school history but lost in the Big South title game.
In the 15 seasons since then, the Camels endured seven seasons of single-digit wins - including Laing's first two seasons at Campbell - and left their geographic rivals of the Big South for the commuter schools of the Atlantic Sun.
Times are changing at Campbell now. Not only have the Camels left behind the second-smallest home court in Division I, but in two years, Campbell will leave the long road trips and rapidly growing schools of the Atlantic Sun - Kennesaw State and Florida Gulf Coast and North Florida - to return to the Big South, partially lifting a long-standing ban on Sunday competition in the process.
That's all in the future. For now, the Camels head south for a two-game Florida trip starting Thursday at Stetson. It's not a make-or-break trip in terms of the standings, but it is in terms of this team's belief in itself and what it can accomplish.
"We've got work ahead of us, there's no question," Laing said. "After this road trip, one of two things will happen. We'll either grow and meet that challenge and be right there at the end, or I don't want to think about the other one."
Courtesy: GoCamels.com