"Meet the Coaches": Higginbotham shows off dance moves

By Rudy Coggins
Published in Sports on October 28, 2014 1:48 PM

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When University of Mount Olive men's basketball coach Joey Higginbotham heard his name announced over the PA system he walked out to the court to join his men's team holding his daughter's hand.

Then the music overcame him.

Higginbotham let go of his daughter's hand and started dancing with her to a packed house of cheering fans at Kornegay Arena for the fourth annual Meet the Coaches Night on Monday.

Then the seventh-year head coach shocked the audience and his team when he got on the court and hit the worm.

"I apologize for acting like a fool," he joked later to the crowd. "But hey we had fun."

And fun was what the event was all about. Higginbotham later started the first 'U-MO' chant in the gym to celebrate the school's new name. When Dwight McKay added new events to try and increase the participation and crowd size to take the event to the next level, he surely didn't anticipate his head basketball coach gettin' jiggy with it.

"I think it was shocking to everybody," UMO men's basketball forward Mike Moore said.

The annual green-white basketball games were preceded by a dunk contest and a three-point shootout.

Wieland Wins

John Wieland outshot freshman teammate James Rucker and girl's team members Gabby Griffin and Tommarah Harris in the inaugural Battle of the Sexes three-point shootout.

Wieland drained eight long-range shots in the final round to win over Harris.

The rookie Rucker struggled in his first appearance in front of a crowd at UMO. And Higginbotham didn't let it go unnoticed.

When the round was over Higginbotham asked for Rucker's total on the microphone.

"Do I even want to know?" Higginbotham asked. "You really lit it up, rook. We're going to have to get a new rim (from so many shots hitting off it)."

Hargrove's hops don't help

Kendall Hargrove had never lost a dunk contest.

Dating back to high school, the University of Mount Olive senior had won five of them.

And on Monday night Hargrove listened to the crowd cheering for the champion of the first-ever dunk contest at the University of Mount Olive Meet the Coaches Night.

Only they weren't cheering for him.

Hargrove lost in a dunk contest for the first time to teammate Mike Moore during the contest that had fans pack Kornegay Arena for the biggest crowd in the event's history.

"It's grown a lot since I got here," Moore, a junior, said. "The dunk contest, three-point contest are new things that are cool. It's good to see so many people here."

Moore out-dunked freshman James Rucker as well as Hargrove with a 360 alley-oop off the backboard as his best of three dunks. Hargrove attempted to do a between the legs dunk, but wasn't able to complete it, before settling for a reverse jam.

Rucker's best dunk involved an alley-oop pass he caught while jumping over a kid from the stands.

Green-White games

Junior Dominique Reed led all scorers with eight points as his White team toppled the Green team 36-20 in the Green-White game.

The White team outscored the Green team 23-9 in the second half of the 20-minute game.

Freshman Tayon Gleaves impressed many in attendance, showing good poise against aggressive man defense and scoring seven points for the winning team. The freshman had two turnovers.

Gleaves' solid guard play was matched on the Green team by junior guard JaQuan Blount. Blount also tallied seven points with no turnovers, and was really the only spark for the Green team.

On the women's side, Ty Wallace and Leah Graham combined for 30 points to lead White to a 36-24 win over the Green team.

A team that is still trying to figure what pieces are going to go where, the women played three 10-minute periods in the game.

The biggest question mark for the Trojans lies in the point guard position. Head coach Wendy Lee admitted she still doesn't know who is going to start as the primary ballhandler.

"We have a whole new team," Lee said. "It's going to take some time to figure things out."

The Trojans could wind up using Croatia-native Anamaria Zjacic as the point guard, who could present plenty of matchup problems for the opposition. The junior is is one of the tallest players on the team at 5-foot-11and showed good dribbling and passing ability. She didn't score in the game but had two assists and was strong on the glass.

Gabby Griffin led the Green team with nine points and Tommarah Harris came off the bench to score seven.