The allure to a junior college basketball program beginning its maiden voyage may very well be the opportunity that it presents.
Opportunity is what led Dejuan Sims of Fort Worth to Southeast Arkansas College.
“Coming out of my situation, I was mostly looking for an opportunity,” said Sims, who previously played at Oklahoma’s Randall University. “The fact that (assistant coach Sam Waniewski) was able to give me a genuine opportunity, that was most important.”
Israel Malone, a Marked Tree native who graduated from Nettleton High in Jonesboro, is getting a fresh start, three seasons after he was last on a college roster.
“It feels good to be the first part of something,” he said. “You’re actually making history. It’s different.”
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Friday will mark the first time the SEARK Sharks take the basketball court for an official game, but it won’t be the first college game for many of its players. Malone last suited up at Eastern Oklahoma State College in the 2021-22 season and is spending his second junior college season in Pine Bluff after visiting SEARK late last spring.
SEARK’s teams will tip off Friday at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff’s H.O. Clemmons Arena, their home site, against Champion Christian College. The women’s game will begin at 5 p.m., with the men’s game to follow at 7.
“We’re starving,” sophomore Tobias Prall of Trenton, N.J., said. “We’re hungry. We had a year to prepare and get to know each other’s game. We got a couple of guys in. We’re hungry, and we’re dogs.”
Players like Prall and Sims have practiced with the Sharks since last fall, just months after the school announced it would begin an athletic program. The baseball and softball teams played their first season last spring, but Athletic Director and Coach Chad Kline used the last school year as a developmental period for men’s basketball, hiring Waniewski as an assistant and making him women’s basketball coach as well.
The Sharks have gone 2-1 in recent scrimmages at Arkansas Baptist College and the University of Arkansas at Monticello and have turned their attention to Champion this week.
Building this team from the ground up has been a process, Kline said.
“You’ll never be your best in November, or if your best is in November, you’ll fade out pretty quickly,” he said. “Our goal is to be the best in February and March and be a little better every day.”
Meanwhile, the Sharks have struck a chemistry in the time they’ve been together and found their individual roles in Kline’s system.
“For the most part, he lets us play free, but he emphasizes us trying to make the right play every time,” Prall said. “I come from a school where we were just freelancing, but he emphasizes us making the right play every time, then we can play free and everything will flow.”
Depending on the situation, that may mean creating opportunities for others to score.
“Me, personally, I’m trying to get my teammates open first. I’m trying to pass first,” Prall said. He and Sims have gotten to know each other’s game for a year now.
“I’m an elite shooter, first and foremost, being able to play on ball and off ball, allowing my teammates to create opportunities for themselves,” Sims said. “It makes it one of my best things to do.”
Malone, like Prall and Sims, is a guard and has seen the chemistry take shape on the practice court, noting that some of the 5-on-5 groups are the same in practice.
“Our guards are nice,” Malone said. “We have some tough guards. They can shoot well.”
The Sharks don’t rely on a traditional center, meaning the players learn all five positions on the court. Kline said a center is hard to find on the junior college level in today’s game.
SEARK’s men’s team is scheduled for 29 games through February. The Sharks will play at UA-Phillips in Helena-West Helena on Nov. 7, at Champion in Hot Springs on Nov. 11, at home against LeMoyne-Owen College on Nov. 14, home vs. Mississippi’s Coahoma Community College on Nov. 18, and Dallas College Mountain View and Dallas College Richland both in the Arkansas/Texas Challenge Classic in Lockesburg, Nov. 22-23.
Dejuan Sims
Tobias Prall