The University of Central Arkansas men's basketball team will begin its season Nov. 11 against Central Methodist. As a tune-up for the regular-season opener, the Bears will host Central Baptist this Friday, Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. in the Farris Center. As the Bears begin their first Division-I season, they are in the midst of breaking in a predominantly new unit consisting of three true freshmen, one redshirt freshman and four junior college transfers. Only four players return who saw the court last year for UCA, with three seniors among them. Guard Fred Campbell, a DeSoto, Texas native who came to UCA from New Mexico Junior College in 2004, is one of the trio the Bears will rely heavily upon this season. Last year, Campbell scored 7.6 points per game, hit 39.6 percent of his 3-pointers, 78.9 percent of his free throws and recorded 1.3 steals per game in helping the Bears to 18 wins – including hitting a last-second, game-winning 3 at Harding. After a long practice session of keeping his shot in game-winning form, Campbell took a breather to discuss the upcoming season.

Q: You're less than two weeks out from getting UCA's first Division-I season underway. How excited are you to get started?
A: We're so excited about the season, moving up from D-II to D-I. We hope everybody else is excited about it, too. When I first came here, Coach Chappell talked about how we'd probably be going Division I for this year. It's been exciting looking forward to it ever since. It seems like the students are more involved, too. Every day I'll be walking around campus and somebody will stop and ask me about the season or say something about us going to play UConn. I think everybody's excited about being D-I, and there should be more energy this year.

Q:What do you see being the biggest change from Division II?
A: It's going to be a lot different and a lot more exciting. I think the biggest difference is probably going to be the crowds. In D-II we've been playing mostly in front of around 1,200 people. Now, sometimes it's going to be 12,000. So it'll be a change having to deal with all that pressure. Another change is how physical it's going to be and how the big men now are going to be 6-foot-11 or 7-foot. Last year they might've been more about 6-8 or 6-9. Coach Chappell talks about it every day in practice, how we've got to be prepared.

Q: The marquee game on the schedule this year is obviously the match-up with UConn. That's a big game but you guys also have some other tough ones. How difficult is it not to get too caught up in that one?
A: It's a big game for us and should help us figure out where we stand as a team. They're one of the best programs in the country and they're known for having great players and Coach Calhoun is one of the best. But we know we've got to play Bucknell, Ole Miss, Bowling Green, Northwestern State and all those others. The coaching staff and the older guys especially realize how good a lot of those teams are. So we've got to be ready for everybody. Every game is important and we want to win them all for sure, but most of our focus is on the Southland Conference.

Q: This Friday you guys have an exhibition against Central Baptist. With the Homecoming football game on Saturday and a lot of people being in town during the weekend for that, do you think you might see a decent crowd out to get a glimpse of the basketball team?
A: I think that'll help us out. It would really boost our confidence as a team to have a good crowd out for our game Friday night. We've got this exhibition and the season opener before we take off, and we'll be on the road a lot this year, so playing in front of a home crowd whenever we get the chance is a big plus for us.

Q: You've got a bunch of newcomers on this year's team between freshmen and transfers. How has it been trying to get everybody to jell and on the same page?
A: This team is similar to last year's team as far as having a lot of guys who left. It's basically a completely new team, just like the situation last year except we're a lot younger. The young guys are listening to the vets and the coaches, and I think they're coming along real well. We're a young team, but talented.

Q: What do you think the team's strengths are, and what still needs some work?
A: Our strengths are that we're probably going to play more as a team this year, our shooting will be a strength since we've got a lot of perimeter threats, and I think rebounding. We still need to work on communicating on the floor, especially on defense in defensive transitions. But that comes with playing with each other more and that's what we're working on every day in practice.

Q: Even though you know there's not going to be any postseason play this season, there's still a lot to play for. What is it you're hoping to accomplish?
A: We want to play well and win as many games as we can, and being a senior I want to pass the torch down to the young guys – show them to work hard every day. If you work hard every day, you'll accomplish a lot of goals. We've got to play hard and practice hard every day. Right now we've just got to go out there and play for one another and have some pride. Pride in ourselves and some UCA pride. No matter what, we're going to play hard. If we have to play chess against the best team in the nation, we're going to play chess hard.