In their return to the hardwood, the South Arkansas Community College men’s basketball team won seven games.
However, the 2019-20 Stars won’t be remembered for their record.
For coach Nate Davis, this group will be remembered as the ones that laid the foundation for the future.
“We had 16 originally on the roster. Things happened, and we ended up I think finishing the season with 10 or 11, but those guys that stuck it out, they were there through it all,” Davis said.
“I told them that they were going to be always remembered as that first group who laid this foundation. We started off slow early in the year, we picked up a few more wins toward the end, but they bought into the process.
“They’re trusting it, and with the ones we have returning, they already know and understand that the new ones that are coming in, they’re going to have to buy in to what we’re selling them. It was a challenge, but you’ve got to start somewhere.”
With eight players returning, including NJCAA Division II Second-Team All-Region selection Jerrodney Tubbs, the Stars have the makings of improving their win total next year.
A former standout at Junction City, Tubbs led the Stars in scoring at 15.6 points per game and rebounding at 9.8 boards per game while playing a key role as a reserve.
“He came into the year, and he wasn’t a starter,” Davis said. “He started only five or six games this year. He preferred to come off the bench. You don’t really see a kid that’s not a starter making an All-Region team, let alone as a freshman.”
Could Tubbs get the opportunity to move on to a four-year school?
“I believe that is definitely a possibility,” Davis said. “You look at him and he’s 6-3. Division 1 guys that are 6-3 are probably playing the one and not the five.
“Even at D-2, a lot of those guys are 6-7, 6-8, but Tubbs doesn’t play like he’s 6-3, he plays like he’s 7-3. He’s gained a lot of respect over this season from a lot of coaches around here.
“If he keeps his head on right, and he does everything he’s supposed to do, I feel like he’s got a good shot at playing at a four-year school after he graduates here.”
Davis has been quite busy on the recruiting trail, signing Strong’s Derrion Davis and Jeremiah Young, as well as Hampton’s Jayln Jones and El Dorado’s Jordan Tubbs.
Davis also signed former Strong standout Lee Champion, who originally attended Mississippi Delta before moving on to the Stars.
Although the coronavirus pandemic has slowed recruiting in some aspects, it has continued in others.
“Social media is a very powerful tool,” Davis said. “I have an account on Twitter, and a lot of student-athletes, especially high school ones, that’s their way of getting their exposure out. Kids have Facebook and Instagram, but from what I’m understanding, Twitter is the route to go for student-athletes that are at least looking to go on to the next level.
“They have Hudl accounts, and they’re sharing that. If their high school games have been filmed, they go in and they have a link in there and you can go click and watch their highlights or the film entirely.
“I’ve got coaches and players e-mailing me, messaging me, texting me film highlights. That has not changed over this time. The only difference now is you can’t bring them on campus for a visit, but it’s not really hindering us in the recruiting process. It’s still pretty easy to get.”
With a local fervor to the roster, attendance for the Stars’ debut season was much better than anticipated with SouthArk finishing seventh out of 130 schools in Division II.
“I wish that we could say that we’re great prognosticators and geniuses when it came to all of this, but it did surprise us when we had the kind of attendance figures that we had,” said Heath Waldrop, the director of marketing and public relations at SouthArk.
“It was more or less sustained through the season. Part of my job entails getting people in the bleachers, and we worked really hard on promoting it in a lot of different ways. This was a first-year thing for us, and we weren’t really sure what to expect.
“We were hoping, and based on some of the communication we had with peers at other schools, we were expecting to come in around at 50 to maybe 75 per home game. We felt like if we got that, if we averaged that, we would feel pretty good, well we averaged about three times that.
“It does say something that a lot of the student-athletes on the roster are from the area, and from a driving distance, so their families can come and watch them play, which is a big thing.
“If you’re halfway across the country or even a state over, sometimes your family wouldn’t be able to go and watch you play, but we had situations where former teammates who were still in high school came and watched, former high school coaches came and watched, a lot of that turnout also.”
The Stars are hoping attendance will be even better in their second season since they not only will have the addition of the women’s team playing, they will also be playing in their own gym, which is being renovated and expected to be completed by the end of spring.
“As we get to play the women’s season this year, we expect to be able to expand on top of that,” Waldrop said.
“In a lot of cases, the women and the men probably will be playing on the same evening, so people will come and watch one and stay for the other.
“We expect that the attendance figures actually will climb from where we started, and the fact that we will be playing on campus this coming year.
“Now Barton Junior High (the Stars' home for the 2019-20 season) is not far from campus, but if we have some situations where we have classes happening around the same time as tip-off, then we hope that we’ll have a lot more of our own student body.
“They’ll just have to walk 50 feet and be able to go watch a game and not have to pay to get in because if they have their student ID, they don’t have to pay to watch, so we expect that number to climb in the fall.”
Now Davis is hoping he can build off of Year One and continue to bring more fans out to see the Stars.
“It definitely makes a difference because these smaller schools or bigger schools locally are going to travel for their student-athletes,” Davis said.