University of Southern Mississippi Athletics
Eagles Basketball Into Second Week; Clinic Set For Saturday
10/23/2002 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Eagles Basketball Into Second Week;
Clinic Set For Saturday
Hattiesburg, Miss. - Southern Miss' Golden Eagle basketball squad followed a busy weekend practice schedule by taking Tuesday off, but quickly got back into their early-morning workout mode with a 6:30 session today. That will be followed by an even earlier 5:30 a.m., Thursday practice.
Today's practice concentrated heavily on conditioning. "Normally when you take a day off, practice is a little sluggish," Head Coach James Green said. "That was the case today. There were some things that we did well for a period of time, but those went away, and we then concentrated on conditioning. I think we got better as a result.
"That's something that we haven't done up to this point, but it is something that you have to do to get better physically, as well as get stronger mentally. We'll be better tomorrow as a result."
Now 10 days into preseason practice, Green says his outlook for the team is more optimistic than ever. "I think we've just gotten better," he said. "We see a lot of guys doing a lot of different things, see guys making plays that we haven't seen before; so I think that we, as coaches, now feel that we have an even better shot to do some things than we did before practice started. That doesn't mean that we don't still have a lot of work to do, but we see a lot of potential."
Early-morning workouts probably are not the norm around the college basketball world, but Green, whose team's normal schedule involves a steady diet of 5:30 and 6:30 a.m., workouts, says his Golden Eagle players like it. "At one point, we did it one semester and stopped the second semester," he said. "But the players decided they'd prefer to do it all year long. By that time they had gotten accustomed to it, and once they get in here and get going, they forget about what time it is; and, once the practice is over, they look ahead at their day and are glad they have gotten practice out of the way. The early-morning practices can be really tough if there are things that have gone on the night before, so that makes it even more important for our players to manage their time wisely in that situation."
The team will end the second week of practice with a day-long Saturday coaching clinic that will center around an afternoon practice, and Green says the response to the clinic has been exceptional. "We have had a lot of coaches calling, and I think a lot of them will be here for the day," he said. "It's an opportunity for us, as Golden Eagle coaches, to expose them to what we do, but also to learn from them as well. It's our clinic, we won't have guest speakers, but we will talk about what we do from a philosophy standpoint. We'll also have a practice the coaches will attend, and we can discuss with them our different drills, and what we do to develop the kind of philosophy we want in our team.
"This is something that we've done before, though it was more of an open practice, moreso than a clinic, so we decided that we wanted to take it a step further. It should be beneficial for us as a staff, as a team, and to the coaches who attend."
Conference USA Men's and Women's Basketball Media Day also is scheduled for Nov. 3, in Chicago, Ill. The Eagles open the regular season, Nov. 22, at home, against Alcorn State.
Also, a variety of ticket options are available, both single game and season, and those tickets remain on sale at the Athletic Ticket Office located in the Ferlise Center, or by calling 601-266-5418 or 1-800-844-TICK.
