Thursday, March 5, 2009

NSU's basketball recruits are practicing patience

NORFOLK, VA - Rob Hampton was not prepared for how long a college basketball season could be when you're watching it from the sidelines. Then he sat through his first home game at Norfolk State's Echols Hall as a spectator and thought: This is going to take some getting used to. "It took about three hours from the time we walked into the gym to the end of the game," said Hampton, a 6-foot-4 guard who played the previous two seasons at Drexel University. "It felt like three days."

Hampton must sit through such pain one more time - tonight, when the Spartans host North Carolina A&T at 8 to close out their regular season. He's hard to miss. While everyone else is dressed in uniform or warm-ups, Hampton normally sits at the end of the Norfolk State bench wearing gray sweats. He could watch things from the bleachers, as do two other redshirting transfers - Christian Morris, formerly of Rutgers, and Marcos Tamares, formerly of Maryland-Baltimore County. But Hampton prefers to be closer to the action.

For two years at Drexel, Hampton was knee deep in that action. After minimal playing time as a freshman, he averaged 20.7 minutes a game as a sophomore, scoring 4.5 points a game.

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