Home finales

When the Eastern New Mexico basketball teams stride out onto the Greyhound Arena floor, there's something special, something different about it.

They're home. They've got that crowd behind them, the energy.

So it won't be too hard for Eastern men's coach Tres Segler and women's coach Josh Prock to motivate their players for the two games this week because they will be the last two played in that friendly, electric environment this season. For some players, they're the last two home games ever.

Eastern's women host Texas A&M-Kingsville at 5:30 Thursday and entertain Angelo State at 2 p.m. Saturday. The men will follow each game, tipping off against Kingsville at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Angelo State at 4 p.m. Saturday.

After this week, both teams are in Texas for the rest of the regular season. Still big games, but no home crowd to bring that special, different feeling.

So, this is a week to savor.

"It's nice to be able to be in our home arena," Prock said. "We're going to try to finish off the home schedule the right way."

And Prock doesn't just mean on the court. Thursday will be Breast Cancer Awareness Night, and the Greyhounds will be decked out in pink to show their support.

"It's important to honor those who have fought or are still fighting breast cancer," Prock said.

And Saturday will be Senior Night for both teams.

"Of course, always an emotional day to say goodbye to our seniors," Prock said. "We still have games to play, but it's always tough."

Women's

Though it may be hard not to look ahead toward Saturday's showdown against Angelo State, the Greyhounds (16-6, 11-3 Lone Star Conference) will have to focus on Texas A&M-Kingsville first.

Angelo occupies first place in the Lone Star Conference, but A&M-Kingsville (8-13, 5-9 overall) can't be taken lightly, despite its current five-game losing streak. That's how upsets happen.

So Eastern will need to be wary on both ends of the floor.

"Kingsville is a very good defensive team," Prock said. "They do a great job of taking away the things that you like to do. Offensively, they do a great job of the dribble weave and dribble drive."

Kingsville has skilled players capable of executing those offenses. Leading scorer Brynae Thompson (15.7 ppg) is one dangerous player in particular, according to Prock. "So we're going to have to do a good job on her," he said.

Once the Greyhounds are through with Kingsville, they can then turn their attention to Angelo State.

"Angelo one of the best teams in the country," Prock said. "They have one of the most explosive players in (senior guard) Marquita Daniels. She's a tremendous talent."

As of Tuesday, Daniels had team-highs in scoring average (15.4), assists (74) and steals (57).

"She is just so fast," Prock said. "She's extremely quick off the dribble; she's also dangerous from the outside. You have to do a good job on her. Guarding her is a team defensive effort. You're not going to go 1-on-1 against her."

Prock also cited 6-4 junior forward De'Anira Moore, who averages 15.0 points and a team-high 7.7 rebounds per game. She's also far and away her team's leading shot blocker with 23.

And there's senior guard Dezirae Hampton, averaging 12.7 points and 7.4 rebounds per game. She's also second to Daniels in assists (49) and steals (29), and second to Moore in blocks (7).

"She's probably one of my favorite kids in this league," Prock said of Hampton. "She's athletic, she plays hard. She does a lot to help them win games."

That trio is part of the reason Angelo State owns first place, with Eastern and West Texas A&M (19-3, 11-3 LSC) looking up.

"We're going to have to do a good job of holding serve and taking care of our home court," Prock said.

Men's

Regarding Texas A&M-Kingsville, Segler says it starts at the top with Johnny Estelle.

"First and foremost, Coach Estelle - their head coach - is one of my guys I really look up to," Segler said. "Johnny Estelle is one of those guys, he's an unbelievable coach. He motivates in a very similar way to me, he's a very high energy guy. Because of that, our teams tend to play a very similar style. We have different offenses, but the way that we look at the game is very similar."

So how will Estelle attack Segler's defense?

"Very high tempo," Segler said. "They're going to do a lot of dribble weave stuff at the beginning of possessions. They want to lull you to sleep, and when it comes time to attack, they're going to put the ball in the lane. So (Monday), we did a bunch of one-on-one drills to make sure we could stay on the basketball, and we did some transition drills."

Defensively, Segler already knows he'll like what he sees from Kingsville (10-10, 6-6 LSC) after being zoned to the nines in last week's games.

"They're mainly a man team," Segler said, "which is kind of a breath of fresh air. I think that's just kind of Coach Estelle's philosophy, he's going to go man on you."

Because of that, Segler hopes to exploit matchup advantages using ENMU players like senior forward Chukuka Emili and junior guard Darius Sawyer. "We need to be able to get the ball into the lane and score in and around the rim," Segler said, "and get some of the easy ones.

"They're going to have a plan for Chukuka," Segler continued. "When we see how they're going to guard the post, we're going to have to adjust. But that's kind of a chess game with Coach Estelle. He's always going to have a good plan for you."

While preparing for A&M-Kingsville, Eastern (10-11, 7-6 LSC) is also trying to work on game-planning for Angelo State (16-5, 9-3), which is coached by Portales native and Eastern alum Cinco Boone. Angelo's defensive scheme, known as 'blue' or 'ice', was used by Bobby Knight at Indiana and Texas Tech, and has been utilized very effectively in the NBA.

"It's just a different way to try and guard the ball screen," Segler said. "They try to keep that ball carrier on the ball screen. They try to keep him by the sideline, trap him by the sideline. It just forces you to prepare a little differently. ... It's almost a two-person zone on the ball screen."

Aside from being Eastern's last two home games and two more key LSC games, they're also rematches of games the Hounds lost in January - 88-69 at Angelo State and 68-59 at Kingsville. The Jan. 10 game against Angelo was obviously the bigger stinker of the two, but Segler gives his team a good chance to even up the season series.

"I think in a lot of ways Angelo hasn't seen the real us," Segler said. "That's good and bad. The bad is that they beat us pretty handily. The good is ... I think we've grown a lot since that Angelo game."

Segler will at least be able to go at both teams with a healthy roster, something that hasn't been the case for much of this season.

"I'm finally feeling like we've got a full deck of cards," he said.