Southern women return more experienced, healthy

• By PERRYN KEYS
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Nov 8, 2009

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Determined to contend again for the Southwestern Athletic Conference championship, the Southern women’s basketball team dedicated itself to a hardcore offseason conditioning program.

None of that was really a surprise.

The surprise was Carlos Funchess, who never dreamed he’d have to go through the hardest program of them all.

Funchess, in his fifth season as an assistant to head coach Sandy Pugh, was playing in a 35-and-over basketball league last month when he tried to grab a loose ball.

“My mind said I could go get it, but my Achilles’ tendon said no,” Funchess said. “I’d never had problems with it. None whatsoever. But it just popped, and I knew exactly what it was.”

Since then, Funchess has staggered around the F.G. Clark Activity Center on crutches, often leaning against the base of a goal while he directs traffic on the floor. Soon, he’ll be able to ditch the crutches and walk with his foot in a protective boot. In the meantime, Funchess has to bum rides from his wife and co-workers.

Funny thing is, when it comes to walking-wounded coaches, he’s not alone.

Pugh said another of her longtime assistants, former LSU men’s basketball player T.J. Pugh, needs knee surgery but has agreed to put it off until the spring, after the Jaguars’ season ends.

“That leaves this 44-year-old woman to do what I can do,” Sandy Pugh said with a laugh. “It’s a challenge. But that’s what it’s all about.”

The Jaguars hope Funchess’ injury is the last one they see for a while, because, well, they’ve had more than their fill of them lately.

Their run of bad health (and bad luck) started in January, when Freda Allen, the team’s No. 1 threat in the post and a SWAC player-of-the-year candidate, crashed to the floor with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee — her second such injury in three years.

All told, SU suffered seven knee injuries last year — including three that required surgery — and stumbled through parts of the SWAC schedule as fatigue took over and the Jaguars’ outside jumper all but disappeared.

For example: On Jan. 24, when the Jaguars posted a road win at Alabama State, they had just eight players in uniform.