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January 31, 2005 —
The 2004-2005 Saginaw Valley State University men's basketball roster is filled with experience, leadership, and dependability. Nine of the 13 members on the team are either juniors or seniors and have at least three years of college experience. Lately, production and dependability has come in the form of two underclassmen.
Sophomore Sydney McDaniel and freshman Brandon Ball have each provided a surge in the starting lineup of the Cardinals this season. They each provide their own individual talents to the team, and contribute what they can to each game.
McDaniel is second on the team in scoring at 11.2 ppg, first in field goal attempts with 212, first in steals at 1.2 spg, and first in minutes played with 31.0 mpg. Ball is fifth on the team in scoring at 6.2 ppg, first in assists at 2.7 apg, and second in minutes played with 28.2 mpg.
McDaniel is no rookie when it comes to experience at the college level. He spent last season with Head Coach Jamie Matthews at Manchester College in North Manchester, Indiana. He transferred up to SVSU when Matthews took the job as head coach of the Cardinals. He has had individual success in the past, as he led his Indianapolis Pike High School team to a 29-0 record and a state championship as a senior. Last season, as a freshman, he led Manchester in scoring at 15 points per game. He garnered all-conference awards and was named the teams' most valuable freshman.
He has recently stepped into a starting role for the Cardinals and Matthews, and shown some impressive signs of talent early in his career. He had a career-high night on Thursday, Jan. 27 when he poured in 33 points against Michigan Tech. Matthews knows that the addition of McDaniel into the lineup brings about a different kind of offensive spread with a dangerous three-point threat hanging around at the arc. However, Matthews also says that McDaniel needs to get into a rhythm and produce on a regular basis.
"He needs to be more consistent," Matthews says. "He can't score 33 points one night and seven the next night. He has improved though, and I look forward to the future with him."
Ball, on the other hand, is a first-year college basketball player and has impressed everyone, including his coach. He has shown great signs of durability, including playing for all available 85 minutes in two games in the Upper Peninsula this past weekend. In those 85 minutes, Ball only turned the ball over twice. That made his coach, a former point guard himself, happy.
"He has become a much smarter basketball player," Matthews says. "He's getting better, that's for sure."
Ball was a three-year varsity letterwinner at Grand Rapids Union High School, where he was named to the All-City team two years in a row, and averaged 20 points per game during his senior season.
Although he is not scoring as much as he did when he was in high school, he is still contributing to the team in different ways. He is the point guard, runs the floor well, and has improved his assist-to-turnover ratio.
Matthews has said that he is extra hard on his point guards because he has such high expectations for them, but says, "He is very competitive. He is out there in practice and he is willing to learn, and that's good."