Tag: Marshall University

Marshall Women’s Basketball hope to improve on 2012-2013 season

Marshall Women’s Basketball Head Coach Matt Daniel is set to tip off his second season in Huntington.

How does the Marshall Women’s Basketball program rebound from a rough first year under new Head Coach Matt Daniel in 2012-2013? They bring in 10 new girls to fill the roster. A year after finishing 9-20 overall and 3-13? in Conference USA play, the Marshall Women hope to fit more into Coach Daniel’s up-tempo style of play.

“Well with 10 new faces you never know how that’s going to equate to wins and losses, but they’ve really jelled together really quickly. I really like the personality of our team and we’re not a group that takes ourselves too seriously, we’re just out here to work hard and try to have a good time and see what happens at the end of 40 minutes,” Daniel said.

Despite adding 10 new girls to the team, five girls with starting experience do return to help steady the transition. Among Daniel’s goals as the coach of The Herd is to bring in local talent. This year Daniel as added freshman Kiana Evans from Huntington, McKenzie Akers from Princeton and Talequia Hamilton—a University of Cincinnati transfer that originally hails from Huntington. Daniel thinks local talent could be the key.

“You know when you’re recruiting kids and you’re establishing who you want to be and I was just talking to President Kopp and I want to do it with kids that are local and I think that’s important that we educate the kids that are within our tri-state area and hopefully at the end of the day try to win a few ball games as well,” Daniel said.

Marshall opens the season November 8th at home against Bluefield College. The Herd plays 9 of its first 11 games at home and has 18 home days overall. Daniel thinks his group of girls will take to his philosophy of being aggressive and quick.

“Well they’re very coachable and that’s all you can ask and it’s going to be interesting to see. It can get real fun real fast or it can still be a grind, you hope for the best, but you plan for the worst, so we’re just going to go out and we’ll kind of see what’s what then and see where we go, but I’m really pleased with the effort the girls are giving,” Daniel said.

Among those returnee’s is 5th year senior forward Erica Woods. She said this group is different than last year’s team.

“I have never in all my life seen a group of young ladies come together and jell at once so quickly. Obviously still have a ways to go and there is always room for improvement and things like that, but definitely willing to want to get it right, not be right, but get things right, we’re all about us and not just one person,” Woods said.

Not only is the team changing, but the conference the women play in is changing quickly. With 8 new schools, some of which have had previous national success, play could be tougher than it’s ever been. Woods said with the addition of all the new girls they can play the style that Coach Daniel wants.

“We just have girls that are ready to get after it day-in and day-out and everybody seems to be buying into Coach Daniel’s concept and like I said in practice everything is full speed. And if we don’t go full speed, we run and nobody wants to run, so we just try to do as he says and get in and get out,” Woods said.

Among the newcomers is transfer Talequia Hamilton, who said her transfer back home from Cincinnati was about playing in front of the people she cares about.

“I missed home, I really did. Of the two years I was there I wasn’t 

  really sure that my heart was in it, but I knew back home that I would get to play in front of my friends and my family, so I’m going to put my all into it,” Hamilton said.

Daniel hopes that home mentality for the local girls can be one of the keys to resurgence. 

Accrediting body lifts probation for Marshall Medical School

In June 2011 Marshall University’s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine was recommended for probation by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education. After making many necessary changes the school had its probation lifted late last week.

The LCME’s complaints were in the areas of a lack of diversity for students and faculty; lower-than-average scholarship support and higher than average student debt; limited programs to promote student wellbeing, limited advising, lack of a financial aid and debt management program and curricular issues. Dr. Joseph Shapiro was hired in the spring of 2012 as the new Dean with the mission of bringing the school out of probation. Shapiro said each of the issues was addressed.

“We need to continue to build things and we need to continue to get better and better. I’m very happy with our trajectory and I’m very happy that we’re moving in the right direction,” Shapiro said.

In the areas of diversity, a new diversity director was hired, new programs have been put in place to help students find scholarships and get financial help and research has become a much more important issue at the medical school than ever before. Shapiro said the probation could turn out to be a good thing.

“Was it a blessing in disguise to be on probation? Well maybe, it certainly got people focused and people were certainly receptive to the message I brought, but we’re doing the things we should be doing now and I still find it an incredible challenge and opportunity,” Shapiro said.

"Was it a blessing in disguise to be on probation? Well maybe, it certainly got people focused," Shapiro said.

Shapiro said Marshall’s medical school can’t compare to top medical research institutions like Harvard, Yale or Penn. Instead, the school must focus on what it does well.

“If we look at numbers like how many of our students are do practice in West Virginia and how many of them ultimately do primary care practices, our numbers are pretty good and how well we’re training them and how good they are as doctors is again a hard number to get too, but those are the numbers that are kind of interesting,” Shapiro said.

The Dean said the probation period definitely hurt the recruiting the school was able to do during the two year period. But the hope is with the probation lifted, things will begin to look up.

“It certainly hurt enrollment and hurt recruitment, the year before I came on, although we traditionally recruit very well in West Virginia, we were really challenged because of probation,” Shapiro said. “Last year we recruited better for medical school, I think because we told students all the things that we were doing.”

Shapiro said although the probation has been lifted Marshall will work to continue to improve on the areas that the Liaison Committee on Medical Education questioned.

Is obesity related to genetics?

Childhood obesity could be related to the absence of one particular hormone according to research presented this week during a conference in Huntington.

  Losing weight is as simple as having more self-control. At least that’s what some think. A new study though shows that maybe it’s not that simple, maybe obesity is tied to a hormone called Leptin. And when people don’t have enough of it in their system, their body tells them to eat more.

Dr. Jeffrey Friedman of Rockefeller University in New York, presented these findings at a Childhood Obesity Conference in Huntington hosted by the Marshall University School of Medicine. The focus was on fighting childhood obesity and its causes, including alternative ideas like Friedman’s.

Friedman said he along with other researchers want to look deeper into body weight than just saying people need more self-control.

“We study the genes and biological factors that regulate body weight and we now know that there are several genes that when defective can cause obesity in humans and this has led us to a deeper understanding of the neural circuitry in our brain that regulates appetite and weight,” Friedman said.

Scientists are studying genes related to the hormone Leptin, which plays a role in regulating the appetite. Leptin is a protein produced by fatty tissue and is believed to regulate the fat storage in the body. Scientists believe people with low or absent levels of Leptin tend to eat much more. Friedman said these are factors that people can’t control.

"This is not simply a matter of lack of will power or a toxic environment, that different people have different genetic endowments that lead some people to become obese and others not," Friedman said.

“I think the bottom line here is that this is not simply a matter of lack of will power or a toxic environment, that different people have different genetic endowments that lead some people to become obese and others not,” Friedman said.  

Friedman said these findings could lead to an entire new way of thinking for scientists.

He says it could take 10 to 20 years for those treatments to emerge. He also says only a small amount of people are lacking Leptin, but that it could lead to other research that might combine Leptin with other drugs to solve some obesity  cases. Friedman said obese individuals need a new mindset when trying to lose weight.

“It should focus our attention much more on health than weight per say. And the health benefits of weight loss can be achieve with pretty modest amounts of weight loss. And so I think it’s going to be important based on what we know about the biology to not focus on people normalizing their weight, but rather reducing their weight sufficiently to improve their healt,” Friedman said..

Athar Nawab is a first year medical school student at Marshall. He said Friedman presented an entirely new way of looking at obesity.

“I thought his ideas of obesity and the genes involved were pretty enlightening and it’s a different way of thinking about it as opposed to blaming the person that’s obese, there could be deeper issues,” Nawab said.

Michael Andryka is also in his first year of medical school.

“It’s not necessarily an issue of will power or environment, but there may be some hormonal control and some genetic role. And I think this is probably a pretty promising line of research or it seems to be,” Andryka said.

The students think it could open the doors for different treatments as they become doctors. 

Can Marshall Basketball rebound after tough 2012-2013 season?

Marshall Men's basketball began practice this week for the 2013-2014 season. After finishing last season with a 13-19 record, there were not many…

Marshall Men’s basketball began practice this week for the 2013-2014 season.

  After finishing last season with a 13-19 record, there were not many positives to look forward to this season for Marshall Basketball. But the Herd is a team of newcomers mixed with just a few returnees. Counting graduations and departures Marshall only returns six players from last season and mixes them with nine newcomers. Marshall Head Coach Tom Herrion said he likes the mix of guys he has.

“I know how far we have to go, we’ve got a lot of areas that we have to become really good at and that’s going to happen over time, but I can assure you the one thing I’m confident about as I sit here is the fabric of our group. They’ve really displayed great attitude, pride and willingness,” Herrion said.

One thing that will help the Herd with its inexperience is a new NCAA rule that allows teams to start practice earlier. Marshall officially began practice last Friday, almost two weeks earlier than past seasons. The new NCAA legislation permits 30 days of practice in a 42-day period before the first game. The Herd’s first game is November 8th against South Carolina State.

“With this new start date it’s been good for me as a coach because it’s really forces you have to a little bit better management of your practice situations. With the move up of the time you get 30 practices in roughly a 42-day window and I think it’s good because we’re really not going to go no more than three days at a time, at least for the first three or four weeks without a day off,” Herrion said.

It’s not just starting practice earlier that has the Herd encouraged though, a late summer trip to Canada to play in NCAA exempted games against Canadian Schools has given the Herd needed experience in game situations. Herrion said these added experiences and a line-up of guys with more versatility will allow them do some different things offensively and defensively.

“I think what you’ll see most is our level of extended aggressiveness, we’ve been more of a team that’s played you purely in the half-court defensively. I think you’ll see both in makes and misses defensively our ball pressure point of pick-up will be much higher,” Herrion said.

What that all means is guys like freshman point guard Kareem Canty will be applying full-court pressure to the man with the basketball. Canty sat out last year when he didn’t qualify academically. Canty said he’s looking forward to an aggressive playing style.

“We get to run and jump, we get to run and go, if we can get a stop easy, we can get easy dunks and layups, easy baskets will help us offensively,” Canty said.

Senior forward Elijah Pittman is the leading returning scorer for the Herd at 16 points a game. He echoed coach Herrion’s sentiment, saying versatility will be the key for the Herd.

“There is going to be certain games where we need four guards on the floor, there’s going to be certain games where we need three bigs on the floor and some people are going to have to play positions there not use to, but there is a lot of people on this team that can do that,” Pittman said.

Pittman said with schools like perennial Conference USA power Memphis leaving the conference, it’s time for the Herd to step up.

“When someone leaves the kings chair or the throne they have to pass it down to somebody and I feel like we need to be the team that they pass it down too, we need to be that big time school,” Pittman said.

Pittman and the Herd tip off exhibition play October 28th at home against Concord at 7 p.m.

Exit mobile version