Cullowhee, N.C. – If you look long and hard enough, you WILL find Colowhee on a North Carolina road map.
The tiny dot in the southwest corner of the state is the site of tonight’s Kansas-Western Carolina basketball game.
Tipoff is 7:07 p.m. at the 7,826-seat Ramsey Center. A live telecast will be available on channels 13 and 41.
“We’re a rural setting on the edge of Smoky Mountain National Park,” said Western Carolina athletic department official Steve White. “The Cherokee Indian reservation is right here. We’re surrounded by mountains, some up as high as 6,000 feet.
“Culowhee is a little village, an unincorporated village,” White added. “Without the university (6,200 students) it would not be there. When the university is in session, we might have 8 or 9,000 people living here. When school is out of session, it dwindles drastically. Asheville is the nearest city of any consequence, 52 miles away.”
The Catamounts opened the season at home Tuesday night, beating Tusculum, 99-72. KU, meanwhile, improved its record to 2-2 by besting Pomona-Pitzer, 94-38, at Allen Fieldhouse.
Western Carolina, an NCAA Div. 1 school, received quite a shock recently when head coach Steve Cottrell resigned. Cottrell had compiled a 145-113 record the past 10 years at Estern Carolina. Assistant Herb Krusen has taken over as heac coach. At 29, he’s the second youngest head coach in Div. I.
“He (Cottrell) said it was for personal reasons, that he was going to leave coaching. There was no external or internal pressure, as far as I know,” said White. “I think he was tired of it. The timing was awkward. His son, our top recruit for this year, Mike Cottrell, left with him.”
KU beat the Catamounts, 101-79, two years ago at Allen Fieldhouse. The Jayhakws were to have returned the trip last year to open Ramsey Center.
“Kansas wanted to move around its schedule for TV,” said White. “We already were playing Florida State and North Carolina State at home, so we moved it a year.”
Western Carolina finished 10-19 last year, its first losing season in nine years.
The Catamounts are led by 6-5 junior Bennie Goettie, who averaged 23 points a game last year at Lake City (Fla.) Junior College. He scored 24 points and grabbed 14 rebounds in Western Carolina’s 103-96 exhibition loss to Marathon Oil.
Robert Hill, a 6-4 junior, averaged 15.1 points last year, while Floyd Showers, a 6-5 junior, averaged 10.7 and Andre Gaunt, a 6-8 senior, averaged 10.3.
