It looked like ETSU, the No. 1 seed in the tournament, would run away with it early in the game as the Lady Bucs jumped out to a quick 11-0 lead. But the Lady Bruins put on a run of their own and after two buckets by freshman Alyssa Visbeen, Belmont held a 21-19 lead. The two teams exchanged baskets until halftime when ETSU went into the break up by a point, 30-29.

In the second half, the Lady Bucs came out firing.  Back-to-back threes to open the half created a gap that Belmont couldn’t close.

Belmont sophomore Haley Nelson had an outstanding second half, scoring all 16 of her points in the last 20 minutes.  She also finished with 12 rebounds.  Sophomore Cacey Burtnett added 14 points and 13 rebounds.

The Lady Bruins finish the season 15-15.

The Bruins started out hot, hitting six of their first seven three-point attempts on their way to an early 21-9 lead.  But the Bears—lead by senior guard James Florence—charged back with conviction and eventually narrowed the gap.

Down 60-46 with 13:45 left in the game, Mercer went on a 12-2 run to shrink the Bruin lead to two.  By the time the final two minutes came around, the Bears found themselves with an eight-point lead.  The Bruins made a final charge, getting a possession to tie the game with 16 seconds left.

Freshman guard Ian Clark attempted a pass inside that got knocked away and stolen by Mercer.  Belmont was forced to foul and their dreams of an Atlantic Sun tournament championship and NCAA big were dashed.

“I thought Mercer deserved to win. I thought they played a great last 10 minutes of the game on both ends of the floor,” Belmont head coach Rick Byrd said. “I thought Bob put his kids in a position to score points and they made shots.”

Mercer guard James Florence led all scorers with 24 points and Clark finished an outstanding freshman campaign with 19 points.

This is the first time Belmont hasn’t made the Atlantic Sun semifinals since 2003—a six year streak that came to an end tonight.

Take the Britannic.  Everyone remembers it’s sister ship—the Titanic—an unfortunate vessel that in 1912 hit an iceberg and sank tragically (sans frozen Leonardo DiCaprio, contrary to some interpretations).

The Britannic wrecked in 1916.  Folks still don’t know what caused an explosion in one of the boiler ships, but some of the same defects from the Titanic prevented people from escaping safety.  The tragic scene was eerily similar to the one four years earlier.

While the situation isn’t nearly as dire, the concept is the same with Belmont and Mercer.

In the past three years, Mercer has sunk numerous times against Belmont—in tragic ways.  Visions of Mick Hedgepeth’s last second put-back from last year’s A-Sun tournament probably still keep Bears head coach Bob Hoffman up at night.

Each of the last five games between the Bruins and Bears have been decided by six points or less—with Mercer winning just once.

Still, Mercer will need big contributions from seniors James Florence and Daniel Emerson.  They will have the home crowd behind them, but both players are fighting off injuries from an arduous season.

Belmont needs to be ready for Mercer’s best shot.  Belmont head coach Rick Byrd has thrived in tournament situations—so expect nothing less than a cold-blooded showing by the Bruins.

Some match-ups require the ins-and-outs of statistics, but this is not one of them.  As Kennesaw State showed us in the first game of the tournament, March is about readiness, heart and a little bit of luck—things that will only be measured by the final score.

Mercer will try to prevent history from repeating itself.

With the end of the regular season comes post-season awards, and because I don’t actually have a vote for the Atlantic Sun All-Conference team (yet), I’ve made it up my own:

Guard – Josh Slater – Lipscomb – Big shots.  That’s what Lipscomb’s Slater will be remembered for in 2009-2010. There have been numerous games this year that the Bisons simply wouldn’t have won without Slater—and in a conference race as close as the Atlantic Sun, that’s crucial.

Guard – Ben Smith – Jacksonville – Smith has straight up done work this year.  The Atlantic Sun Preseason Player of the Year is tied for ninth in the country for minutes played per game with 37.3. Smith is a floor general in the truest sense of the word and has earned himself a spot on this list.

Guard/Forward – Jonathan Rodriguez – Campbell – It’s been a long time coming for Rodriguez.  For a guy that has single-handedly turned around a program, Rodriguez has had a silently solid career and year.  He is the motor that has made Campbell go for the past four seasons, and finished up his final college year with solid numbers: 17.2 points per game, and 8.2 rebounds.

Forward – Adnan Hodzic – Lipscomb – There’s only one word to describe how Hodzic has played this year: beast.  He’s scored 27 percent of Lipscomb’s points this year and has pulled down more than a quarter of their rebounds.  With the Atlantic Sun regular season championship on the line, Hodzic only scored 37 points and grabbed 17 rebounds.  Beast.

Center – Nick Schneiders – South Carolina-Upstate – Schneiders probably won’t get this same recognition from the league, but I’m giving it to him and here’s why: Schneiders has improved tremendously over the past two years ago.  When he arrived at Upstate, it was hard to imagine him really being a viable post presence. But this year, he’s really come around.  The 7’3” center is 13^th in the nation in blocks and averaged 12.4 points per contest.  Sure, Upstate only won six games this year, but Schneiders gets credit for hanging in there and being an inspiration and true success story.

Freshman of the Year – Ian Clark – Belmont – This is really a no-brainer.  Clark has been Belmont’s most valuable player since he dropped 21 points in his first game as a Bruin.  Belmont coach Rick Byrd said this season would largely depend on how the freshmen would play—and it is largely because of Clark that Belmont received part of the regular season championship.

Player of the Year – Adnan Hodzic – Lipscomb – See above.  Beast.

Make sure to be checking back here at BelmontVision.com and following @Pierce_G for our extensive coverage of Belmont Bruins March Madness!

“Maybe we should have, but we hadn’t really thought about one because we hadn’t had to deal with the situation,” Strickland said last week.

In the case of Shaunda Strayhorn, who missed the 2008-09 season and gave birth to a daughter in January 2009, Strickland said he and others within the athletic department made sure her scholarship was intact.

Strayhorn remained a student at Belmont in fall 2008 even though she did not play basketball. She stayed out of school for the spring semester, and she returned to both the classroom and the basketball court in the fall.

Strickland said the athletic department wanted to be sure Strayhorn’s health issues were taken care of; basketball needed to take a back seat.

“We’re going to work with you academically and health-wise and then as soon as you’re able to come back, we’re going to put you back in as a basketball player,” Strickland said.

In the fall of 2008 after she told the coaches she was pregnant, Strayhorn said her card for the locker room was deactivated, she was asked to sit across from the team at games, and she was not included in the media guide or the team picture.

“It felt like they kind of shunned me because they closed the locker room to me,” Strayhorn said. “They didn’t really want me too much around, and I didn’t understand.”

The NCAA provides schools with a model pregnancy policy that is in accordance with Title IX, the federal gender equity law passed in 1972.  Title IX states: “A recipient shall treat pregnancy in the same manner and under the same policies as any other temporary disability.”

Strickland said he believes Belmont followed that protocol with both Strayhorn and Tereva Moore. Moore began her junior season last fall; she is now pregnant so she is off the court but still in school this spring.

The NCAA policy, Strickland said, ”is kind of an open-ended statement like a lot of NCAA open-ended statements. I would say to you that’s what we did, really. We didn’t treat anybody any different than we would any other injury.”

Strayhorn said she was frustrated at the time, but saw it all as part of the maturing process.

“I had to grow up. I didn’t think it was fair but I had to move on,” Strayhorn said.

Another issue is the absence of a pregnancy policy in the Belmont student-athlete handbook – something Strickland said needs to change.

Belmont, however, is not exceptional in this. According to a 2009 report by the College Sport Research Institute, only 50 of 327 NCAA Division I universities had an active pregnancy policy that was accessible to student-athletes.

“I think that’s something we probably should have in our handbook and we’ll address that as we produce the next one,” Strickland said. “Again, we really just hadn’t thought about it before it happened.”

When the cloud began to clear, he saw a woman covered in blood. She crawled out of the rubble, then raised her hands and sang to Jezi, Haitian Creole for “Jesus.”

“These people taught us what it meant to have faith in the middle of a crisis,” he said after returning from Haiti, where more than 200,000 people died in the earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12.

Flowers went to Haiti with members of Woodmont Christian Church. Belmont’s Office of Spiritual Development asked Flowers to talk to students about his experience in Haiti, before, during, and after the earthquake. When he began speaking on Feb. 3, he emphasized not the destruction of the natural disaster, but instead the manner of the Haitian people.

“These are people who love one another, who want to help one another, but who don’t have the resources to do it,” Flowers told students in Neely Dining Hall. “But these are things that we have … the power to give them.”

Even before the earthquake hit, Haiti faced a different kind of disaster, one that was constant. Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere.

“The average income before the earthquake was $700 a year for an entire family,” Flowers said. “Less than $2 a day for an entire family.”

During their stay before the earthquake, the church group visited children in orphanages. In one of the orphanages, 40 children stayed in a three-bedroom house with no mattresses and no kitchen.

Instead they had “a corner with nothing in it but a bag of grits about this big,” Flowers said, placing his hands about two feet apart. “It was two-thirds empty, and that was all the food that they had.”

After the earthquake the country needed and still needs even more aid.

Belmont is making efforts to help Haiti. Donations can be made and put into boxes all around campus.

Student Josh Thompson planned a benefit concert Feb. 19 at Curb Café that included Belmont musicians Brinley Addington, Chase Foster, Jason Nix, Josh Thompson, Kelsey Noffsinger, Lyndsey Highlander, Sydney Hutchko and Tucker Perry.

Thompson wanted to use “the music side of Belmont” to raise awareness, he said.

The students have a partnership with the Hope for Haiti Foundation, so all donations will go straight to the organization.

For alternative ways to help, both Flowers and Micah Weedman, director of outreach with University Ministries, recommend donating money to an organization in Haiti. Weedman suggested students financially support locally led organizations in Haiti rather than send care packages.

“Even before the earthquake happened, the mail service was a joke,” Flowers said. “Of course no one’s over there trying to deliver mail right now. So any supplies that get there will take months if not years to get there.”

There are several organizations in Haiti helping accepting donations which go straight to Haiti.

A quick and easy way to give money is by texting “Haiti” to 90999 to make a $10 donation to the American Red Cross, an effort supported by the U.S. State Department. All funds will support American Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti.

Every pass is sharp; every shot is well-calculated. If things aren’t going well, she screams. If they are, she yells.

But after the game, all the intensity melts away.  Kayleign – Shaunda’s 1-year-old daughter – is the instigator.  Shaunda’s eyes soften and her demeanor calms when Kayleign is in her arms.

“On the court, I’m pretty feisty and off the court, I’m pretty feisty,” Shaunda said. “Probably a little calmer off the court, now that I have the baby.”

Quiet Beginnings

Shaunda’s story begins 180 miles west of Nashville in rural Dyersburg, Tenn. The small town on the Forked Deer River is big on agriculture and hunting. That leaves only a few options for young girls with big dreams.

“Basketball … and that’s about it,” Shaunda said.  “School and basketball.”

Her dad set up a goal outside, enrolled her in a recreation league at age 5 and she was on her way.  In 2006, Shaunda graduated from Dyersburg High School with 1,200 career points – she was a four-year starter.

Colleges like UT-Chattanooga and Mississippi State called, but Shaunda simply picked the one closest to home – Belmont.

“There were bigger schools looking at me, but I’m a home person,” Shaunda said. “I didn’t want to go too far, and I wanted my dad to come see me.”

Life Changes

In her first two years at Belmont, Shaunda started 40 games and was a reliable option at point guard. As a freshman in 2007, she played 34 minutes in the first-round NCAA loss to Georgia.

More than a year later, Shaunda learned she was pregnant. Immediately, she was worried about how Belmont and her coaches would react.

“I was scared that they weren’t going to be too supportive,” Shaunda said.

After some online research, Shaunda knew her scholarship would be safe under Title IX gender equity laws. But that was just the first hurdle.

At age 20, Shaunda really had to grow up. Her daughter was born in January 2009, and the path she was on took a dramatic twist.

A Little Help From A Friend

Shaunda and Tereva Moore hit it off right away. From the first time they met at Towering Traditions, they knew they’d be best friends.

“We were going to be roommates so we knew we were going to be forced together all the time,” Tereva said. “We just hit it off and have been close ever since.”

On a trip to Cancun in 2007-2008, they got identical tattoos – a lasting mark of friendship.

Still, Tereva found it hard to hide her astonishment when Shaunda told her she was pregnant.

“Going with basketball and school and the timing and stuff, I was just shocked,” Tereva said.  “After the whole shock stage, I supported her.”

That support came in a number of ways. Tereva wouldn’t let Shaunda pick up a single box when she had to move out of their apartment. They also stayed up late at night thinking of names. Kayleign was a favorite from the beginning.

“That was one of the names I picked first and it just stuck with me,” Shaunda said.

Getting Back On The Court

Despite having new priorities, basketball was always in the back of Shaunda’s mind. Her doctors instructed her to limit her athletic involvement, but Shaunda used to sneak into the gym to shoot.
Her mind was made up: she would come back.

“I wanted to prove everybody wrong, really.  I might not play after college, but I know while I’m in college, I want to play,” Shaunda said. “I didn’t want everybody to look at me and be like, ‘Yeah, she’s just a typical person: had a kid and quit.’”

This season, Shaunda, one of just two players on the squad to start every game, averages more than 30 minutes per game, and is in the nation’s Top 50 in assists, doling out 129 so far this season.

Meanwhile, Kayleign watches on from the stands in her grandma’s lap. Her big eyes and playful personality make her a favorite for the camera during timeouts. In one instance, Shaunda looked up to the screens from the bench and pumped her fists in the air, with a big smile on her face.

But things aren’t always easy. Kayleign’s dad moved to Atlanta. Shaunda and her mom, who moved to Nashville to help out, share the duties of taking care of an infant quickly becoming a toddler.

“It gets tough … Coming home, I have to get her and fit in classwork,” Shaunda said. “It’s not too hard, but she’s kind of rowdy.”

The experience of being a mother has helped Shaunda mature as a person.

“When I first came in here, I was like a spitfire ‘can’t-tell-me-nothing,’ but I’ve calmed down,” Shaunda said.“I let people speak before I speak.”

For now, there’s some sense of normalcy and routine in Shaunda’s life. She has basketball and Kayleign. The whole team came over for her first birthday party.

Shaunda and Tereva, best friends and former roommates, played nine games together in fall 2009 before Tereva revealed that she was pregnant. She had been playing more than two months into her pregnancy. The baby will be a boy.  He’s due on the Fourth of July.

Just as Shaunda did two years ago, Tereva has had to grow up. “She brought it upon herself, just like me,” Tereva said. “So she just had to do what she had to do.”

But Tereva’s still in school and said she definitely plans to return to the basketball court.

Earlier this year Shaunda missed two free throws with five seconds left against Alabama that ultimately led to the Tide scoring a game-tying basket at the end of regulation.

But as she’s done before, Shaunda fought back. With four seconds left, she stole an inbounds pass under the basket and put it up for a quick lay-up to give Belmont a 69-68 win.

Perseverance through adversity: a perfect metaphor for life.

In two months and 20 days, I will leave Belmont University with a diploma and $27,958 in debt in an uncertain economy where even the most qualified people aren’t finding work. So why am I still being aggressively targeted by companies that prey on sentimentality?

Let me back up.

A couple of weeks ago, I grabbed the mail; beneath a stack of bills, junk mail and a James Bond movie from Netflix, I discovered a letter addressed to me from Belmont. But when I opened the envelope, I discovered that the letter was actually from Jostens, vendor of high school and college memorabilia, advising me on graduation packages.

Since then I’ve been inundated with opportunities to spend cash to commemorate my impending graduation. The “basic package” would run me $80 for 25 personalized announcements, 25 note cards, 30 return address labels and 25 custom envelope seals. Effectively, I would be paying $80 to tell 25 people that I’m graduating, in a thinly veiled request for a handout. The packages get more elaborate from there, topping out at $171.85, which piles on announcement inserts, a diploma frame and a certificate of appreciation for good measure.

Putting aside the high cost for a moment, is any of this really necessary? Like it or not, most of my family is on Facebook. With a single status update, I can tell everyone what’s happening. If I missed anyone, then there’s always e-mail. Or telephone. Or carrier pigeon. My point is that I have options and all of them have a more personal touch than the generic postcards I’m being offered for a fair sum of money.

Maybe it’s because I come from a family where practicality is king or maybe it’s because I’m uncomfortable putting the spotlight on myself — no need to point out the irony of writing an editorial, I’m way ahead of you — but I can’t see any situation where I would spend money to celebrate myself. I don’t mean to diminish the milestone; it’s an undeniably important part of all students’ lives, but I honestly don’t understand how the ritual suggested by Jostens on their own Web site honors the achievement any more than the alternative.

But that’s only the beginning. Belmont’s graduation checklist includes the option to purchase a class ring for the low starting price of $371, and the graduation packet given out to seniors includes an advertisement for a photographer shooting at commencement. Not to throw a fellow photog under the bus, but are shots from a point-and-shoot camera any less significant than what amounts to a highly staged yearbook photo?

It’s probably not going to win me any swag from distant family members and it may earn me a reputation as a graduation Scrooge, but I’ll be much more comfortable blowing off the attempts to squeeze a little more money out of my college career. I’m sure my bank account will be thrilled too.

Most of the reporting I’ve done for the Vision has been fairly straight forward– news, the occasional profile, but from time to time I get to do a piece that leans less on straight presentation of facts.

For example, I’m working on a feature piece about the 12 South area – that funky stretch of shops and businesses between Linden Avenue and Kirkwood Avenue. In talking to several business owners, I’ve been closing with the question, “what does 12 South feel like?”

The question is completely necessary in communicating what 12 South is as a place and what that means to the people who live and work there, but I was a bit nervous about asking the question.

It’s easy to get used to the world as a cynical place. People get locked into tight definitions of appropriate behavior- – what’s “cool” isn’t so much “cool” as it is “safe” anymore. “Cool” guards against smirks and raised eyebrows that can sting more than outright criticism sometimes.

Think of a pair of mirrored Aviators. They’re really slick shades because no one can see your eyes. Aviators are a sign of a modern day stoicism that is a flat out lack of emotion.

(Full disclosure: Writer has been wearing the same pair of Aviators since ’07.)

“Cool” means that hardly anything actually is.

I use this word because few others have been so enduring in terms of representing staying within certain socially accepted lines and ultimately, managing the way people perceive you. It can be an attitude, it can be a framework for judgment and rejection.

Can a street “feel” like something? Of course, but what if no one were willing to admit that? What if no one wanted to show some sentiment? What was I going to say when I got an incredulous, “what do you mean ‘feel,’” as if I were trying to pull some hippie dippie nonsense?

Get in touch with your feminine side, describe the shape of that cloud, and tell me what a bunch of buildings “feel” like.

If I start anticipating cynical reactions from everyone, maybe I’ve been around people who react that way for too long.

I did ask my question, though. I needed to know and I was prepared to push. If they were going to think I was loopy I didn’t care as long as they answered me seriously.

Each and every person I interviewed raised their eyebrows – because they hadn’t thought of it before. They told me it was a good question, and slowly and carefully tried to put together an answer – I think because the neighborhood is important to these folks and they wanted to say what they really felt about it.

I’d say that’s pretty cool.

Sitting face to face with Schlosser, I noticed that he didn’t display the usual charismatic marks of a man who has pulled the rug out from under some of the most powerful companies in America.  He spoke barely above a whisper, never petitioning me to agree with him or to jump on board his cause; nevertheless, I began to feel that the only things that mattered in the whole world then were the words that were coming out of his mouth.  He is a man who chooses his words as carefully as he chooses the food that he eats.

For the sake of the reader, I initially intended to trim down my interview with Mr. Schlosser to bare highlights.  As it were, the highlights include every word that he spoke, so for the sake of the reader I include the wisdom he shared with me.

Belmont Vision: In the movie “Food, Inc.” you comment that you want to “lift the veil away from important subjects that are being hidden.” Where did this passion come from?
Eric Schlosser: Well, a high-minded explanation is that is what investigative reporters do – expose injustice and try to cut through the lies and show what’s really happening.  On a personal level, if there’s something that you’re not supposed to know, I kind of want to know it. If they don’t want you to know, there’s got to be a reason, and I want to know.  So in a lot of ways, I’m just kind of fulfilling my curiosity.

You also say in the movie that the food industry has changed more in the last 50 years than in the last 2000 years.  Is a systematic change for the better possible?
I think it absolutely can be.  I mean there’s nothing inevitable about what happened.  And one of the reasons to write about it, and to write history, is to show how something happens.  If something isn’t inevitable, that means things don’t have to be the way they are.  And you look at how fast these changes have occurred, and how serious the problems that have been created are, that it’s not even about whether it needs to be changed, but it’s like, how fast can we change it, and how do we save these huge problems?

It can be easy to pawn off responsibility to others with the mentality of “it’s too big for me to change it.”  While “Food, Inc.” is popular within the university demographic, it can often be difficult to make the transition from inspiration to action.  How do you feel college students can get involved in the systematic element of this movement?
It all depends on what you feel passionate about.  There’s no one way.  I think there’s this kind of feeling that either you’re perfect and pure or forget it, it’s not even worth doing anything about, because it’s just too overwhelming.  So I guess, the first thing is not to be overwhelmed and to realize that small changes, if lots of people make them, can make a huge difference.  Ultimately it’s what you feel passionate about and how you then get involved in a community within a movement that feels the same way.

Some people are going to feel passionate about kids and what’s happening in our schools. And they’re going work for better nutrition and better school meals.  Some people are going to be passionate about animals and how they are being abused.  Some people are going to feel passionate about immigrant workers and how they’re being abused.  And so you don’t have to do everything – you can’t do everything.  But it’s really good if you do something. And if everybody does something, it makes a big difference.

When you’re talking about political reform, [it’s about] changing the system so these candidates aren’t owned and operated by these big companies.  So it’s all about, what do you care about and how much do you care about it? You can devote your entire life to working on one of these issues, but I don’t think you have to. I think the first responsibility is to be aware, and then the second response is to do something.

How do we prevent this movement from being a passing fad?  And further, how can we prevent it from being attainable only to a small upper-middleclass demographic?
It’s important to keep in mind that the people who are suffering the worst harms of this system are the people at the bottom of society.  And that would include the migrant workers who pick all those healthy foods that we eat, who are the lowest paid in the United States, who are the most likely to be exposed to pesticides and be sickened by them.  [It also includes] the meat packers who process our meat.  The highest levels of diabetes and obesity and all the health problems that come from this junk food are among the poor.

I strongly encourage people to shop at Whole Foods, to buy organic, to buy local, to help support sustainable agriculture, but at the same time, to do so in a spirit that’s not just thinking of themselves, their own families, their own health, but also how this system impacts people at the very bottom.

We’re moving towards a society in which the well-to-do are going to be healthier, fitter, and eat better food, and live longer than ever before, and the poor are going to be more unfit, more unhealthy than ever before because of their diet, and that’s just wrong.  And for this movement to have a long-term sustainability it needs to embrace everyone in the society, not just the people who can afford the organic heirloom tomatoes at Whole Foods.

How do you see this wider embrace happening?
Part of this is through consuming, to the degree that when you buy organic you drive down the price of organic; to the degree that it’s a small-niche market so it is more expensive; and to the degree that you support companies that are doing things the right way and have good policies towards workers and towards animals – that makes a change.  But also to the degree that you get involved in this movement, [that ensures] that it can be broadened.

This looks like bringing healthy food to schools through the school lunch program, bringing farmer’s markets to low-income communities and making sure that people can use food stamps to buy food at farmer’s markets, and working toward new agricultural policies in the country so that we’re not subsidizing unhealthy foods and making healthy foods expensive.  The government has a huge impact on what foods are produced and what their prices are and who gets access to them.

It’s almost like this Confucian thing where first you take care of yourself, then you take care of your family, then you take care of your community, then you take care of your state, and it all builds out. But the place to start is with yourself.

What do you love most about your job?
The most fascinating part of my job, in a broad sense, is how my work takes me out of my office, and out of the library, and into the world. And it’s the people I’ve been able to meet and the worlds that I’ve explored that are just so different than anything that I’ve been around before.  It’s kind of just engaging with this country and what’s happening. I love my job!