Inside the first team meeting of his final season as a collegiate basketball player, Lance Potier was told he would not start. His minutes would likely evaporate, too. Don’t think about scoring, either, coaches told him.
What, then, was left for the versatile, 6-foot-6 St. Martinville product who dedicated three seasons to the program while toiling in relative anonymity as a seventh or eighth man off the bench?
“Rebounding and play defense,” Potier said Tuesday. “I knew that I was going to have to take a backseat away from the offensive side and probably not start, and I was fine with it. I knew I was a great defender. What (coaches) wanted me to do, I knew I could do. I took it and ran with it.”
Saturday’s Southland Conference opener against Northwestern State will be Potier’s eighth consecutive start. The veteran who, prior to the season, was resigned as a role player is now the glue on a team that’s been hammered by its lack of chemistry in pre-conference play.
In steps Potier, whom coach Dave Simmons tasks nightly with defending the opponent’s best player and implores to help with the Cowboys’ moribund rebounding effort.
“He’s so solid,” Simmons said. “He’s been in the program for four years, I know who he is and exactly what he’s going to give me. That’s the comfort level for the coaching staff when you know what guys are going to give you. He may not give you everything every night on the offensive end, but you know he’s going to give you what he has on the defensive end.
Potier’s 5.1 rebounds per game are second to only Stephen Ugochukwu, without whom Potier presumably would not have this enhanced role. Ugochukwu’s pulled hamstring in the early seconds of McNeese’s 104-65 loss to Memphis on Nov. 22 forced Simmons to insert Potier as a stretch-four.
He’s started each game since, averaging 26 minutes a game across the Cowboys’ last eight games while adjusting back to a spot as a three-guard once Ugochukwu returned to full health after missing three games.
“He’s just gotten more opportunity starting and it’s helped us,” Ugochukwu said. “He’s a senior, has experience and he’s been here a while. That, mixed with his size, his versatility, we need that a lot.”
Steadfast in his willingness to do whatever can help his team win, Potier pays little mind to his 4.8 points per game. Sure, he says, scoring more would give him individual pleasure and he even spent the offseason refining a mid-range jumper to become a more complete offensive player.
But it’s hardly required.
“I knew we had so many offensive powers on the team,” Potier says. “I don’t even need to shoot at all. All I have to do is lock up the opponent’s best player and crash rebounds. That’s what we need the most.”
It’s a refreshing take, Simmons says, in a sport becoming more and more overrun with selfishness and egos.
“It’s hard to find guys who will pay that price,” Simmons said. “He struggled a little bit on the offensive side of it, but defensively, he’s done what I’ve asked him to do, which is guard the toughest player on the opponent, rebound the basketball and play hard. I’m happy with that and he’s going to be very valuable in this run for the conference.”
That “price” Simmons speaks of rarely shows up in a box score.
Take, for example, McNeese’s final nonconference game of the season — an 89-57 loss to North Carolina State. After absorbing his fourth and final charge of the evening, Potier stumbled toward the bench unable to keep his rugged facade much longer.
“Coach,” he told Simmons, “that one hurt.”
“You took one for the team,” Simmons replied.
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