Friday was the official start of practice and it turned out to be a good one. The intensity was very good for the first 30 minutes of practice. Guys were all over the place and it was obvious that there would be a lot of competition at every position. I believe this team is the most athletic team Hamline has had in a long time. Even with our guys not really having a clue about our defensive concepts it's plain to see that our length and athleticism will cause other teams problems.
After about twenty minutes of practice we had our first casualty, first to injury and then to an apparent lack of commitment. Noah Aguirre, one of our best returning players went down with a turned ankle and hasn't practiced since. Hopefully, he'll be ready to go by Wednesday (we have Tuesday off). We had a freshmen decide that college basketball wasn't for him. He said his heart wasn't in it and he left. We wish him the best, hopefully he continues his studies at Hamline and finishes his degree here.
As a coach, we don't want to have guys that aren't committed to our program. It's unfortunate that a kid that we spent a decent amount of time and money on decided it wasn't for him, but that's the reality of our situation at the D3 level. It's survival of the fittest a lot of the time.
So far we have had four practices in the past three days. It's been quite the shock for the newcomers. I think they were expecting to work a lot but not at the intensity level that we are working at. As time goes on, everyone's body will adjust to amount of work we do but it will be a while before the body completely adjusts. We want to be in great shape in order to wear teams down in the last eight minutes of every game.
As far as the tryouts go, we've handled everything like we are practicing. We have way more guys than we did last season and it has increased our intensity in every drill. We still haven't decided exactly how many guys we will keep but we are at 20 right now and have only been practicing with 18 because of injuries. We will decide after tomorrow's practice what are plans are.
We will be scrimmaging our alums next Sunday. We will once again scrimmage against Div. 2 St. Cloud State on Nov. 1. They made the D2 Final Four last year with a lot returning. Should be a great test. Our final "scrimmage" will be an exhibition game vs. Concordia-St. Paul on Nov. 9 at their place. It should be interesting to see how we respond to playing against outside competition.
Ray Brown Update - Last weekend Ray traveled to Vermont for a tryout with the Vermont FrostHeaves of the Premiere Basketball League (PBL). He said the tryout went really well and he got a callback for their training camp in a couple of months. He also had a tryout for the NBDL this weekend in Sioux Falls, SD. Not sure how it went but from my understanding they had some representatives in Vermont and really liked his game. He will have to "sign" with the NBDL to be able to be drafted by the league. Ray will be around campus and working out with me to prepare for the leagues. We wish him the best.
