“You’re killing me, Smalls,” has become a household quote and it’s in part to Scotty Smalls, the main character of the 1993 classic movie, simply not grasping the concept of s’mores.

Director and writer David Mickey Evans took a simple idea of taking a Babe Ruth autographed baseball, hitting it into the yard of a vicious dog and turning it into a masterpiece is exactly what director and writer David Mickey Evans did.

This movie simply has everything. It includes the history of America’s pastime and combines it with the camaraderie of the nine boys who grow up together after bonding through baseball. Oh, and how could I forget? This movie has James Earl Jones.

The story goes back to a summer in 1962 where Smalls once followed eight boys who played baseball together to their “sandlot.” The other boys asked him to join and be the ninth member on their team, which Smalls agreed to be despite not knowing a thing about baseball.

After embarrassing himself, Benny taught Smalls the game and he was then accepted by the other seven.  It isn’t until Smalls snatches a baseball autographed by Yankee legend Babe Ruth that he truly finds himself in a pickle.

The boys play with the signed ball and it, eventually, ends up over the fence and into the yard of James Earl Jones and his ever-intimidating dog Hercules, better known as “The Beast.”

The movie’s defining scene comes when Babe Ruth visits Benny, who is known for his lightning speed throughout the movie, in a dream. Benny was inspired by the Babe, who voiced the famous line, “Remember kid, there’s heroes and then there’s legends. Heroes get remembered but legends never die. Follow your heart, kid, and you’ll never go wrong.”

Benny pulled out a pair of 60s classic PF Flyers, hopped the fence and stole the ball from the Beast, cementing his place permanently in movie history and in the hearts of American children everywhere.

From the week before Rowan’s season opener during White’s freshman year, head coach Joe Cassidy stressed White’s defensive ability.

“He has the quickness and speed to guard smaller guys and keep them from getting to the basket. He’s also big enough and strong enough to where he can pretty much guard forwards and power forwards,” Cassidy said. “His defensive versatility is huge. I mean it enables us to put him on the other team’s best player almost all the time and make adjustments around the other guys.”

White, after earning himself a spot on the opening day starting line up in 2009, has also turned into an important gear in Rowan’s offense. He’s averaged 8.0 and 10.8 points respectively the last two years and saw his rebound numbers increase to almost three more per game during that time.

“His mid-range jumper is fine. We need him to improve his three-point shooting, no question about it,” Cassidy said. “But I mean he got better this year. I don’t think he was healthy down the stretch – his knees were bothering him – but we were basically almost starting every game with going to him for a clear-out play and that kind of thing and he was able to score.”

His knees bothered him down the stretch, limiting his mobility on both sides of the ball. He was averaging over 30 minutes a game down the stretch, partly due to injuries to forwards Steve Secula and Rich McNamara and a depleted bench.

“It kind of wore me down a bit,” White said. “My body just had to get used to playing more minutes and that won’t be a problem next year.”

With an increased work-load, Cassidy thinks that White can become one of the best players in the NJAC. All White has to do is put up some good stats to get noticed by the other coaches, Cassidy added.

“I think time will tell,” White said. “I’d be happy but it’s baby steps now. I’m just worried about getting better and seeing us progress next year.”

His team-first mentality is the type of attribute Cassidy thinks will turn him into a very suitable team captain. White thinks it’s about time he steps up his leadership role too.

“The way I look at it, I looked up to Sean (Hughes) a lot because he was the senior captain this year,” White said. “I was just a student to him and really looked up to his leadership. I think I can handle it. I have two years in and I’ll be a junior next year. I think it’s time for me to step up. I feel like I have the qualities to be a leader on this team.”

Becoming captain in only his junior year would be an exclamation point on White’s progress over the short time.

“I think my career has gone pretty well actually. Last year was my first year so I was still trying to get adjusted. This year I finally figured out how to play with the Rowan system and build confidence over the year.”

If White does become the next captain, the torch will have already been passed from Hughes.

“Kendall has been a huge importance to this team,” Hughes said. “It’s almost hard to put into words everything this kid does for us. He’s the defensive stopper. He rebounds. He can score. I believe by next year he will have more of a breakout year and be in contention for Player of the Year in the conference. He’s a great kid with an unbelievable attitude.”

But in the final minute of the opening round against New Jersey City, Hughes saw that door shut, ending a memorable career on the men’s basketball team.

“It’s rough,” Hughes said on Sunday. “I choked up a little bit after the game knowing it was my last game. My teammates really picked me up. Everyone was giving me a hug and they were thanking me so much for everything this year which really meant a lot to me. It’s never good to lose. But we developed a family here and that’s what I’ll remember most.”

It was a tough pill to swallow for Hughes, who scored a game high 24 points in the 75-72 loss to Jersey City.

Tom Paterno had a double-double with 11 points and 14 rebounds and Roger Loatman added 18 points.

With the Profs leading 70-68 with over a minute to play, Hughes turned over the ball on a questionable foul call.

“We were kind of careless with the ball and it happened so fast we looked up and the game was tied,” Hughes said. “The refs might have missed some calls but we can’t solely blame them for it.”

The Gothic Knights capitalized tying the game up at 70. With 18 seconds left, James Livingston hit a three-pointer to give the Gothic Knights a three point lead. Rowan’s Akeem Johnson hit a two-point jumper with 10 seconds left to make it 73-72 but Jersey City converted both free-throws to make it a three-point game again. Hughes missed the three-point attempt as the buzzer sounded, ending the Profs season.

“I’m not happy with the way it ended,” said head coach Joe Cassidy. “I thought we played extremely well but nothing went right the last two minutes, three minutes of the game. They made a couple big shots down the stretch. Livingston is a big shooter and he made two big shots to put them ahead. He stepped up big when they needed him … We played a very good game and it came down to some unfortunate circumstances at the end.”

But despite the disappointment in the loss, Cassidy was very satisfied with the way his team played. There were three keys to the game that if his team executed, they would win: limiting turnovers, getting back on defense to eliminate transition baskets and out-rebound.

“They did get a couple transition baskets I prefer they not get but the things we keyed on we did. The one and three we did really well and the number two we did pretty well,” Cassidy said.

It was a roller coaster of a season for the Profs, who had a hard time stringing together a big winning streak despite backing their way into the NJAC playoffs. And just like last season, it ended with a disappointing first-round exit with a late-game winning shot.

The Profs will have to cope with the sting. But in eight months, the pursuit continues.

But in the course of making the playoffs, the Profs saw their three-game winning streak end last Wednesday as they fell to the same Rutgers-Camden team that let them there, 84-75.

“We didn’t come out with much energy against Camden at all,” said senior guard Sean Hughes, who scored 12 points in the loss.

The Profs trailed by as many as 13 points midway through the first half but fought back to within three at halftime. They eventually took their first lead of the game two minutes into the second half and traded baskets with Camden before letting the game slip away in the final minutes.

“We’ve lost before so it’s not anything new to us,” said senior guard Laud Anderson. “Everybody loses. We just need to bounce back and work hard in practice and we’ll be alright.”

Junior guard Akeem Johnson finished the game with 17 points. He and Anderson (12 points) both came off the bench to provide the Profs with a spark, both offensively and defensively.

Anderson didn’t see playing time until the second half in a move that Cassidy described as a defensive one.
“He played terrific defense,” said head coach Joe Cassidy. “I mean that was a really easy decision to put Laud in for his defense and then he really came through with his shots. Laud played great. If the rest of them played like that then we would be alright.”

“Laud’s role on the team has developed into the defensive stopper. When we were struggling so much with defense, we figured we gotta get a better defender in there and Laud is the best on-the-ball defender we have.”

The Profs hosted Richard Stockton College on Saturday in hopes of gaining redemption for their loss a few weeks ago but again failed to beat the Ospreys, falling, 86-72.
The Profs played “terrific in the first half and were playing well. But then again in the second half, we didn’t play with any enthusiasm and Stockton went on an incredible run,” Hughes said on Sunday.

Hughes led the Profs in scoring that game, finishing with 19 points. Anderson and Johnson both added 10 in the loss.

Some good news for the Profs did come as freshman guard Rich McNamara is nearing a healthy return from a sprained ankle.

“Having him will definitely give us another long-range shooter in there which would be good for us,” Hughes said. “It will also help me pretty much just stay at the shooting guard position as well.”

The Profs have two regular season games remaining, including one final division contest against The College of New Jersey. With their spot a lock in the playoffs, the Profs will look to use their final games to tune them up for the second place team in the north division.

Whatever it is, Steve Secula has once again found himself undergoing knee surgery, ending his 2010-11 season for the Rowan men’s basketball team.

Secula drove the net hard on Jan. 22 against Jersey City, just like he does every game. But mid-air contact knocked him off balance and forced him to hit the ground hard. It was a pain unlike anything he ever felt before.

“Right when I hit the floor, I knew that I was hurt,” Secula said. “Based off of past experiences, I usually know when I’m injured or when it happens. I actually felt the dislocation and the noise was pretty frightening. This was the most painful one I have ever had.”

Secula chipped the bone in his knee cap and tore cartilage in his left knee. It was the sixth time he suffered a serious knee injury in his playing career and it will be the fifth surgery he’ll undergo.

“I’ve had two on tendinitis (in my left knee), one on my ACL (in my right knee), one on my meniscus (in my right knee) and then the one where I had dislocated my knee cap led to this but that didn’t require surgery,” Secula added.

Secula, who will be a senior next year, already has his mind set on the 2011-12 season. He feels that with a year of time together, chemistry won’t be as big an issue with the group of players they have now and that he can just focus on making himself better. “We haven’t performed up to the expectations I had for the team during the years that I have been here,” Secula said. “Individually I want to come back stronger and be more prepared for the season than I was this year.”

Another thing with knee injuries to athletes is that they tend to play more carefully. But not Secula. He said his game will not change over a fear of re-injury.

“Absolutely not. Knee injuries do not affect the way I play at all,” Secula said. “It does not get into my head. I will never hold back in fear of injury. Maybe that’s why I get hurt so much. I only know one way to play.”

The injury was untimely, not just for Secula but for the rest of the Profs. Secula was the team’s leading rebounder, averaging 5.5 per game. He also averaged nine points a game but was averaging almost 13 points the couple weeks prior to his injury.

“I think for a team stand point, his rebounding is going to be harder to replace than his scoring,” said head coach Joe Cassidy. “One of the things that was giving us some success was creating miss-matches and there were a number of games where Steve was being guarded by bigger, slower people and his ability to put the ball on the floor and go by people was one of the things we were kind of banking on.”

Cassidy had hoped that Rich McNamara would step into Secula’s spot but he sprained his ankle at the end of practice last Wednesday. Now Cassidy is hoping that Kendall White steps up into the role Secula left vacant with others filling in the spot White is leaving behind.

“Steve and Kendall have been splitting the five-position, and now Kendall will basically be playing all five when he’s in there,” Cassidy said. “So whatever minutes he played at the three-position will get spread to Laud (Anderson), Akeem (Johnson) or Roger (Loatman).”

The last thing Cassidy said he wanted to see the Profs do was play small. And with both Secula and McNamara out, the Profs will have to do just that.

For the Profs (7-11 overall, 2-6 NJAC), slow starts, poor turnovers and a lack of cohesive play have been their demise for a majority of the season. But their loss to Newark on Saturday revealed some character for a team in search of making it into the NJAC playoffs next month.

In the Profs two games prior to their 85-74 loss to the Scarlet Raiders, they scored 22 and 19 points in the first half against Richard Stockton and New Jersey City respectively and turned over the basketball 38 times in both of those games combined.

But on Saturday, the Profs scored 40 points in the first half and only turned the ball over 12 times all game.

“We played tough and played well together,” said senior guard Sean Hughes. “We shared the ball well and we all got quality shots but we didn’t have an answer for (Pedro) Burgos on Newark. We did all we could on defense. Kendall (White) and Laud (Anderson) played solid defense. That kid couldn’t miss. We missed some layups that we should have converted.”

“We were playing better team basketball. And the turnovers definitely did decrease which was a positive. If we converted some layups and Burgos missed some shots, the game would have been tight at the end.”

Hughes scored 12 points and added three boards and two assists. Both Roger Loatman and Jason Rosenberg led the Profs with 15 points. Loatman also led with nine rebounds and White scored 10 points and grabbed six boards.

The Profs trailed Newark by six at the half. But Burgos drained four three-pointers in the second half to add to his 37 points, helping Newark put away the Profs.

“He was just a good player and a real good shooter. His teammates did a good job and really helped him out,” White said.

The Profs were hit with bad news during last week when junior forward Steve Secula was injured in the Jersey City win. He chipped a bone in his left knee and suffered some torn cartilage. He will have surgery sometime next week, ending his season.

“It’s just another knee injury to add to my list,” Secula said, who is leading the team with 5.5 rebounds per game while chipping in an additional 9 points per game. “I need to work hard like I always have and come back stronger for my senior season. I feel unfortunate and unlucky because of my injuries but I have one more year so I will not let this bring me down and I will be back next year.”

But despite the loss of Secula, the good play in their loss to Newark may have helped Rowan find some new life this season.

“Sometimes we play great and other days we don’t play so well,” Hughes said. “We can definitely finish the year strong with our remaining schedule, which could be huge for us heading into the playoffs. So in a sense, it almost is do or die for us.”

Last Wednesday, the Profs traveled down the Expressway to Richard Stockton College, suffering another frustrating loss, 62-44. Chemistry has been the Profs biggest problem all season.

“It was the same exact thing,” frustrated senior shooting guard Sean Hughes had to say about the team’s lack of chemistry. With Rowan bringing in eight new faces at the start of the season, Hughes has felt it’s taken the team too long to play as a whole unit.

Rowan’s lack of cohesiveness resulted in the ball turned over 25 times. The fans who made the short trip grew frustrated with each botched pass, booted ball and errant shot, counting out each turnover.

“We had 12 [turnovers] in the first half, (Stockton head coach Gerry) Matthews said to me and he didn’t even know how many of them were forced,” said Rowan head coach Joe Cassidy. “Most of them were where guys didn’t catch the ball. I mean you have a guy standing there wide open and instead of throwing the ball into his chest, you throw it at his knees or his ankles and stuff like that goes out of bounds.”

Those turnovers led to a lack of scoring. Rowan failed to form any type of momentum all game last Wednesday and it’s the reason Stockton outscored them 35-22 in the second half after trailing by only four at half time.

“Our three-point field goal percentage is last in the league and we just don’t shoot the ball very well so if you add in the turnovers, a good team like this – they’re a very good team defensively – can make a run on you,” Cassidy added. “You miss two and then turnover two and all of a sudden they have an 8-0 run and put some distance into the game.”

Cassidy also said these are the exact same problems the Profs saw over the break when they went 3-4 but lost four-of-five after the Stockton game.

They finally snapped a two-game losing streak with their 55-47 win over New Jersey City this past Saturday. But both Cassidy and Hughes are confident that with six remaining NJAC games that the Profs can turn it around and get into the NJAC playoffs.

“We’re still trying to make the playoffs so hopefully we can get this together soon,” Hughes said after the loss to Stockton last Wednesday.The Rowan men’s basketball team had their Wednesday night game against the College of New Jersey canceled due to inclement weather and safety issues. The game, weather-pending will be played Thursday at 8.

To add insult to injury, the 7-9 Seahawks “earned” the fourth seed and an opening round home game in the playoffs. They should have been playing the third-seeded Philadelphia Eagles on the road and not hosting the 11-5 New Orleans Saints.

People are calling for a change in the playoff scheme. If not eliminate the automatic bids then at least re-seed the playoffs by record. This way a 7-9 team won’t get a home game in the playoffs.

The defending champion Saints were the heavy favorites to go into Seattle and beat up the Hawks and their “12th man,” the notoriously loud Seattle fans. Those in Louisiana were already looking at airline fairs to Chicago or Atlanta, chanting “Who Dat?” probably while eating their shrimp gumbo.

New Orleans has never won on the road in the playoffs (aside from Superbowl 44 in Miami), but that was an afterthought with them being a two-score favorite. It was easy for the fans in the Big Easy to think Drew Brees would make it pour in Rain City.

But the water-birds were having none of it. Especially running back Marshawn Lynch, whose 67-yard run up the middle while shedding Saints tacklers like pee-wee football players for a touchdown was the highlight of the Wild Card round. His run along with Matt Hasselbeck’s four passing touchdowns sparked Seattle to an improbable 41-36 win over the defending champs.

The Saints jumped out to a 10-0 lead less than nine minutes in and 17-7 lead only minutes into the second quarter. But Seattle rattled off 17 straight points, started by John Carlson’s second touchdown reception and capped by Brandon Stokely’s 45-yard score to set up a 24-20 halftime lead.

People around football started to realize this was going to be a high-scoring affair. With New Orleans defense looking like it couldn’t stop the Seahawks while boasting a high powered offense of their own, it was only going to get more exciting.

Seattle opened the second half with a touchdown to make it 31-20. They kicked another field goal to give them the 34-20 lead with a quarter to play. New Orleans then answered with Julius Jones touchdown run and field goal to make it a 34-30 game.

Then Lynch went Tecmo Bowl on the Saints, breaking tackles and rumbling to a 67-yard touchdown run to put the Saints away. Lynch’s improbable run made such an echo in the Seattle area, that a minor earth quake was measured on the Richter Scale.

New Orleans got a late score but missed the two-point conversion and failed on the onsides kick to seal their fate. Seattle head coach Pete Carroll looked like he was in the middle of a college football pile after winning a major BCS Bowl game with USC. The image of him embracing his star quarterback graced many newspapers, online news sites and sports blogs around the country. It was the biggest story of the Wild Card weekend, setting a very high bar for the three games to follow.

The cold streak continued with their 77-68 loss to Valley Forge Christian College last Thursday. Senior guard Sean Hughes led the Profs with a game-high 19 points. Sophomore guard Kendall White added 18 and had a game-high 11 rebounds for Rowan in the loss.

Rowan trailed by as much as 22 little over 16 minutes into the game and shortened the deficit to 13 by half time. But the Profs couldn’t overcome the Patriots.

With it being the Prof’s fourth straight loss, it completely wiped-out the 3-0 start and Widener Tip-Off tournament win.

“It’s very early in the year,” said Hughes on Tuesday. “Coaches keep stressing to us that it only matters what basketball you’re playing in March that counts. That’s where conference championships are won – not in December. And i agree with that. We still have 18 more games left this season. A lot of time to make up ground.”

Kean University, Rowan’s opponent Wednesday, isn’t just a big obstacle standing in the way of Rowan. They have 6’5” Jonathan Jones, who is averaging 26.2 points per game and poses a huge threat at forward.

“We need to stop their big man, Jones,” said Hughes before the match up. “He is the best player in the conference. We need to mentally prepare to have help on him the entire game.”

The Profs did a good job of holding Jones to only nine points in the first half, but he put the Cougars on his shoulders in the second half, scoring a game-high 26 points and pulling down 17 rebounds as Kean came from being to win, 71-66, extending Rowan’s streak to five games.

“I think he just wore us down,” said Secula. “We started to lose consentration on our weak-side help. We had the same strategy. We were fronting him but in the second half we were lazy on defense and weren’t rotating over or stealing the pass over top.”

Rebounding problems continued to haunt the Profs as they were out-grabbed by Kean, 41-31. They failed to manufacture many second-chance points, grabbing only eight boards on the offensive side.

Hughes and White both fouled out in the contest. Hughes led the Profs with 25 points. White added 10 points of his own and pulled down six rebounds. Steve Secula led the Profs with eight rebounds and added 10 points.

“Obviously they’re two very good players and they’re two very experience players,” said head coach Joe Cassidy. “Kendall is our best defensive player and that made a huge difference. I mean he fouled out so what are you gonna do?”

During the break, the Profs (3-5 overall, 0-2 conference) will play eight games, five of them at home. The match ups include key NJAC games against Montclair State and Richard Stockton College.