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Time to show we earned that ranking
Posted: Sunday November 14, 1999 08:49 PM
It is an honor to be ranked 23rd in the nation by my fellow coaches despite losing four starters. Of course, the preseason rankings are just that -- preseason rankings. As soon as you play your first game, the rankings start to change. Hopefully we can begin to show why we earned that right to be ranked 23rd in the country and go from there. There is a lot of work to be done by every team in the country at this time of the year. There is a lot of uncertainty with every team. Sometimes in practice you can get a false security about some things that your team does.
All teams need a wake-up check early to be able to jump in and work on things and make them good for the rest of the year. For us, that may have come last week in our exhibition game against the Down Under Bandits from Australia. I think in that game we showed that we were willing to play hard enough to keep improving as a basketball team. I feel that we passed the ball well and were very unselfish for this time of the year. That allows us to think that offensively, we will be tough to cover if we continue to play like that. But the exhibition game also pointed out some things that we did not do particularly well. I thought we got tired toward the end of the game, so we need to work on our conditioning. We need to get to where our unit can play 40 minutes without getting tired. We also had too many turnovers. Our ballhandling has to get better as we head into the season.
Getting down to businessWe have one more exhibition game Tuesday night against a team from California that has already beaten Kansas State and played three other highly competitive games against good college basketball teams. Maybe we will find out some more things about our team. Hopefully we will execute better. The main thing is that it gives us another chance to play against outside competition that is very helpful this time of the year. With the start of the season being only one week away, it is time for our players to step up and realize that every day in practice is very important. We can't afford to have any bad practices in terms of our effort or our mental intensity. This is a very exciting time of the year. Our players are looking forward to the start of the season in terms of playing regular season games. They get very tired of practicing. It's one of those things that you learn in coaching -- there is always that first test coming up -- and then there is a test every couple of days for the next three months to see how good you are. But that is what makes college basketball great. It is very difficult to hide in college basketball and one loss doesn't take away from anything you want to do at the end of the year or one win doesn't necessarily establish you as a great basketball team. It's a constant effort and you have to keep working.
Eye on the prosWhile we are getting ready for our second exhibition game, it is interesting to see the NBA start its season. We will be following the NBA a little bit closer than in past years because three of our players from our 1998-99 team have earned roster spots in the NBA.Steve Francis played well for the Houston Rockets in the exhibition season and is a starter for the Houston Rockets. Laron Profit has made the active list with the Washington Wizards, and Obinna Ekezie, out with Vancouver, is also on the active list. Certainly it is a thrill for us that all three of those guys are playing at the highest level of basketball. They all play different positions and they all have a different story on how they made it to the NBA.
I think, as a coach in college, anytime you have players go to the NBA, you take some pride in that. It's not the most important thing that you try to do with your players because so few ever make it. The important thing is to try and make sure everybody receives their education, or at least completes enough on a college campus to where they can be successful when they leave here. You probably worry more about the guys who are not in the NBA because they are the ones who need their education immediately. It will be fun to watch all three of those guys on television throughout the season. They have all earned their way and it is something we are very proud of as a program. I think our style of play helps the players who have the type of talent to make it in the NBA. It will be interesting to see how well Steve Francis, Laron Profit and Obinna Ekezie do as NBA players.
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