• By PERRYN KEYS
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Nov 1, 2009

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From a season with far more lows than highs, Douglas Scott tried to recall the lowest point.

“I don’t know,” said Scott, an Istrouma High graduate who led the Southern men’s basketball team in rebounding last season. “I think the lowest point was the whole year.”

Judging from the results, he had a point.

From any angle, the Jaguars had a season to forget — certainly the worst since coach Rob Spivery took over in 2005-06.

They finished 8-23 overall, with an 8-10 mark in the Southwestern Athletic Conference, and their final game was true to form: A narrow defeat in which too many bad things happened down the stretch.

SU lost to Arkansas-Pine Bluff 62-61 in the first round of the conference tournament.

Just minutes later, Spivery shook hands and talked with some of his former players from Alabama State, grown men who’d made the drive to see their old coach in Birmingham, Ala. He also talked and laughed with his granddaughters, who live there.

More than anything, the coach seemed relieved.

Over the summer, Spivery said he knew his team’s chemistry would get better as soon as that last game ended.

We’re about to find out if he’s right.

Southern, which kicks off 2009-10 with an exhibition Thursday at home against NAIA Xavier, will sport all sorts of new looks, including a change in personnel and a change in style of play.

“I felt last year that we hadn’t had the type of leadership or the type of chemistry we needed to win ballgames,” Spivery said. “We kind of overhauled the basketball team. Many of the players that scheduled to return to this team did not return.”

Scott, a small forward and one of five returning seniors, got down to business this summer. He spent a month with his sister in New Orleans, working out to his own routine: jogging a mile at 6 a.m., then working on basketball drills in the afternoon, followed sometimes by another run late at night.