A quick look at news from around the Southwestern Athletic Conference:

Kyle Veazey and Kareem Copeland, Jackson Clarion-Ledger: Alcorn State and Mississippi State will meet on the football field in 2010, marking the second straight season one of Mississippi's Southwestern Athletic Conference schools has played at Mississippi State.

Adrienne Nettles, Montgomery Advertiser: Officials from Alabama State have met again to discuss the possibility of a new state-of-the-art football stadium on campus.

Nick Deriso, the Deriso Report: Grambling’s defense, a season after playing a key role in securing the SWAC title, has sunk to the bottom of the conference.

Ronnie Turner, Houston Chronicle: For the first time in program history, the Prairie View football team is nationally ranked during the season.

Please read Joseph Schiefelbein's column from Saturday. It's a tremendous rundown on Southern's collection of near-misses throughout this decade -- the handful of plays that have kept the Jaguars from reaching the Southwestern Athletic Conference Championship Game over the past few seasons.

It also puts into perspective the amount of time coach Pete Richardson has left.

Where does Southern go from here? Who knows?

The Jaguars are all but assured of missing Birmingham, Ala., yet again this season. From spring practice through the first two months of the season, that's all the players talked about -- going to Legion Field and playing for a conference title.

For now, the most interesting thing is to watch is how they respond the rest of the way. SU visits Arkansas-Pine Bluff on Saturday, followed by an open date, followed by a game in Mobile, Ala., against Alabama State.

Do the players cash in and roll over from here on out, or do they find a reason to keep playing hard?

The next month will tell.

The Southern men’s basketball team, which opened preseason practice last week, plans to take on a different look from last year’s team, which posted a dismal 8-23 record in the worst season of coach Rob Spivery’s career.

Last year, the Jaguars had trouble at the point guard position and walked the ball up the floor.

This season, they plan on running and gunning a whole lot more often — and they will do so with a drastically different cast of players in the post.

Barry Honoré, who started 54 games over the past two seasons, has and transferred to Oklahoma, where his maternal grandmother is in assisted living nearby and needed someone to “help take care of some business up there,” said Barry’s father, Bruce Honoré.

"This didn't have anything to do with Southern or the (Southwestern Athletic) Conference," Bruce Honoré added. "This was just really a case something where we as a family needed Barry up there in Norman.”

OU spokesman Mike Houck said Honoré will be a walk-on. As a transfer, he must sit out this season.

Spivery released the player once he understood the situation, saying his only problem was with the timing of the move. Honoré asked for the release in late July.

The 6-foot-7 Honoré was the SWAC freshman of the year in 2007-08, when he averaged 8.8 points and 5.1 rebounds per game as the Jaguars finished fifth in the conference.

But last season was a disappointment for Honoré and the team. Honoré started 28 of 30 games, averaging 8.8 points and 4.5 rebounds per game, with a field-goal percentage of 43.

Honoré’s departure means that four of five regular starters from last season are gone. Guards Chris Davis, Steffon Wiley and Geri Guillory all were seniors, and small forward Douglas Scott is the only returning player with more than 20 starts. He averaged 6.9 points and a team-high 7.2 rebounds last season.

Scott will have help from three newcomers in the post.

Just before the start of fall semester, The Jaguars added three players: Madut Bol, a 6-foot-9 forward from St. Anthony’s in Jersey City, N.J.; Quinton Doggett, a 6-foot-8 forward from Western Oklahoma Community College; and Horace Dixon, a 6-foot-7 forward from Angelina College in Lufkin, Texas.

Bol is the son of Manute Bol, the 7-foot-6 shot-blocking specialist who spent 10 years in the NBA.

“He’s got some work to do,” Spivery said. “He’s thin, and he needs to build some strength. We’re hoping he can grow a little more.”

Doggett will be a sophomore this season, with three seasons to play at Southern.

“He’s a is a very skilled inside-outside player,” Spivery said. “He understands how to play the game.”

Dixon, a native of Greenville, S.C., played at Fork Union Military Academy and originally signed with Saint Louis. He then transferred to Angelina College and signed with the University of Houston, but never made it to school.

“He was our last one in,” Spivery said. “Horace is one of those guys whose motor continuously runs. He gets a lot done when he’s out on the floor.”

Members of the Southern baseball team have reconvened after a wild, globetrotting offseason, and fall practice is in full swing.

Here’s a look back at what some of them did since the Jaguars won the 2009 Southwestern Athletic Conference title.

While no player went to the Cape Cod League, like SU catcher Michael Thomas did last summer, several Jaguars spanned the nation playing in various collegiate wood-bat leagues. Among them:

C Frazier Hall played in the Northwoods League for the Waterloo (Iowa) Bucks. In 53 games, he hit .213 with five homers, 10 doubles and 21 RBIs. ...

Two players, LF James Armstrong and P Chase Richard, played in the New York Collegiate Baseball League. Armstrong played 19 games with the Albany Dutchmen, hitting .172 with five RBIs. ... Richard played for Glens Falls, posting a 4-2 record with a 2.30 ERA in 47 innings. He struck out 30 and walked 14. ...

Three Jaguars -- 2B DeMario Ellis, P Brian Foster and P Jarrett Maloy -- played in the California College League for the Compton Academy Barons. Ellis played sparingly, hitting .250 in eight games. ... Foster went 1-0 with a 4.35 ERA in 11 relief appearances. He struck out 14 and walked 14 in 20 2/3 innings. ... Maloy was 1-3 with a 4.75 ERA in 10 appearances (including five starts). Maloy had 20 strikeouts and just three walks, but opponents hit .306 against him. ...

P Kyle Wahl played in the Florida Collegiate League. In 10 appearances for the Leesburg Lightning, he went 4-3 with a 2.68 ERA, striking out 51 and walking 16.

The Jaguars return to action this spring, with longtime coach Roger Cador in the dugout. Cador interviewed with the University of New Orleans this summer, but received a new contract and a pay raise to stay at SU.

When the Southern football team broke out of training camp, Gary Chatman's move to strong safety appeared to be a win-win.

"At strong safety, I can’t just go (after the run) like I want to," Chatman said at the time. "But if this is better for the team, I’m with it.”

A tall, muscular athlete who could run in space, Chatman (6-foot-3, 218 pounds) had been a two-year starter at drop linebacker. But he changed positions for two main reasons:

1) it opened up a spot for talented young linebackers like André Coleman and David Daye; and 2) it fortified a secondary that had no returning starters.

At least, that's what it was supposed to do.

Two months into the season, Chatman has become a player without a home. He sprained his ankle in the season opener at Louisiana-Lafayette and missed the next two games. Finally, he returned in the second half of the Alcorn game -- at drop linebacker.

Even then, the move came after SU's linebacking corps had been ravaged during the game.

At the moment, Chatman spends most of his practice time with the linebackers.

Long story short: The ankle has held him back.

Demetric Rogers, a walk-on redshirt freshman, replaced Chatman at strong safety and has been a playmaker, with 3.5 tackles for loss, one interception and one fumble recovery. Coleman is the team's second-leading tackler.

Chatman is the defensive captain and, at the moment, a former leader. But he could come back for this week’s game against Prairie View.

“With him getting to 100 percent, that’s just going to make us better,” defensive coordinator Terrence Graves said. “But he’s zeroed in, right there in the front, in the thick of things.”