The Legacy of Dale Norman - CH2k8 Legacy

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How it all came together

Sometimes life takes you down unexpected paths. Dale Norman was a star basketball player in a small town of Forest City, Iowa. A small college by the name of Waldorf College was located there, and this is where Dale's career took off. In his two year's at Waldorf Dale averaged 24.4 points per game, and 11.3 assists per game. After posting such great number Dale had the opportunity to transfer to a small division one school in Chicago. The school was Chicago state. In his two years in the program he averaged 8.3 points per game, and 4.5 assists per game.

After posting numbers that were more down to earth in division one basketball Dale knew he didn't have a chance at going pro. He still wanted to be a part of basketball though, and he knew his best chance at that was coaching. After he graduated Chicago State offered him a job as a GA, in which he was there for two years. Now age 24, and being done with his GA, he know took a job as an assistant at Tulane. During his three years at Tulane the team was a little above average, but the impressive thing was the recruiting job he was doing. He was the head coach's main recruiter, and he brought the first ever top 25 class in to Tulane. Some bigger school's took notice of this. After his three year deal at Tulane was up, he decided to not accept an extension and went looking for other jobs.

The move to go look for a bigger job really paid off for Dale, because he had assistant coaching offers from Louisville, Illinois, Iowa, Texas A&M, Florida, and many more. However, the move that Dale made was the smartest one when he took a job under Billy Donovan at Florida. He only spent two years at Florida, one of which the Gators won the SEC, and that brings us to where we are today.

After impressing at the higher level schools, and even the lower tier teams too, Dale Norman has received his first college basketball head coaching job, and it is at Long Island! Congrats to Dale on his first job ever as a head coach.

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Reserved for Table of Contents

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Reserved for season recaps

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Reserved for All time leaders under coach Norman

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LIU Releases 2007-2008 Basketball Schedule




* Indicates conference game
Purple background indicates invitational tournament

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Season Preview

The Blackbirds have a very young and inexperienced team that will be taking the floor this year. Mix this along with a new head coach and things could get ugly at times. The tallest player on the team is 6'7" so things will get ugly if teams throw the ball down low. They only play three seniors, and will have a tough time getting rebounds. The best player on the team is Lex Wilkerson. Lex can shoot the three ball which helps spread out the defense. Point guard Bennie Childress is also an average player, but will see a lot of minutes without a consistent backup guard. The Blackbird's will graduate four seniors this year so Dale will get to use his recruiting ability quickly with four incoming players this next off-season.

*P.S Feel free to post!

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Simulated Game Recap




Thoughts from coach Dale: "This is a game where the better team won. I am proud of the way our guys fought today. We knew we were out talented, but I didn't want us to be out hustled, which we weren't. I know it is only one game, and we didn't win the game but this has to be a morale victory for us. Notre Dame is one of the best teams in the nation and we were right with them at half time. I liked what I saw today, now we need to get focused on Army."

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(Ortiz drives in for a layup)

Army come's back, wins 69-63

This is a game that slipped right thru the fingers of the Long Island Blackbirds. After winning for the entire game up until the 4:33 mark when it was 52-52, and then Army's Jarrod Ortiz hit a three to put the Blacknights up by three.

That is when the crowd got into because they knew that they had a chance at winning the game, and they did. It is unfortunate for the Blackbirds because this would have been the first win for LIU, and the first win of Dale Norman's career.

The Blackbirds were led by Senior Small Forward Lex Wilkerson. Wilkerson led the team in scoring with 25 points on 9-21 shooting. 6 of those shots came from behind the arc.

However, the most impressive performance of the night came from Jarrod Ortiz who we talked about above. The Shooting Guard had 35 points for Army, which included 5 three pointers on 7 attempts.

LIU has their first home game of the year next Tuesday against Columbia (2-1).