Northwestern University Athletics
Wildcats Open Practice for 2014-15 Season
10/3/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
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By Skip Myslenski
NUsports.com Special Contributor
The journey that is any basketball season opened officially on Friday for the `Cats, who are an unalloyed blend of the old and the new. A half-dozen of them are returnees from last year's team, and five of them are much-acclaimed freshmen, and the last of them is a graduate student, the 6-foot-10 Jeremiah Kreisberg, who is slated to spell starting center Alex Olah.
They had been working out together since that quintet of newbies reported back in June and, in the months that had passed, the veterans had indoctrinated them in the culture Chris Collins created last year in his first season as `Cat coach. The toughness. The way they dressed. The way they acted. The way they practiced. But this Friday practice would be their first official gathering of his second season and, just before it began, he was animated as he considered what lay ahead. "I'm just excited to see how we're going to evolve. That's the fun part about it," Collins said here.
"We have all these new pieces and I feel even with the older guys-- there's going to be a lot said about our freshmen. But I'm really pleased with the improvement our older guys have made. JerSon (Cobb) and Tre Demps and Sanjay (Lumpkin) and Olah and (Nathan) Taphorn and Dave (Sobolewski). All those guys who came back from last year's team are better players than they were last year. So I'm excited about their growth as well."
No one yet knows, of course, just how this group will grow together or just how it will look come March. But a hint at what-might-be, at what he hopes it will be, can be gleaned from these words of Collins, who has been asked about the composition of the foundation he laid last year and what he hopes to build upon it. "I think we established a culture for our program. I think we established a little bit of an identity," he began. "We play hard. We compete. We're a blue-collar team. We practice hard. We prepare well. Those are all things I want to be standards of our program.
"Now, as you add more talent, as you add different players, now you can continue to evolve in terms of how you play. Certainly, for us, we have to be a much better offensive team. Our margin for error was so slim last year because we had a hard time scoring. We have to be more efficient. We have to be able to put it in the basket. We have to find a way to get easier points. We have to get out in transition a little bit more. We have to get on the offensive boards. And we have to score in the paint.
"Those are going to be things, as we evolve from last year, that we have to add to being a great defensive team. Our defense saved us last year. Our defense kept us in games, it gave us a chance to win, and some nights we made enough plays offensively to win. Now we've got to take some pressure off our defense. We've got to be able to score the ball better."
Do the freshmen give him more flexibility in that area?
"We have more playmakers. We have more guys who can make plays off the dribble. The one thing that I found out, not that I didn't know, when you get into our conference, teams are so good in scouting, they prepare so well, they take you out of what you want to do. Then the onus goes onto the players to be able to make plays. I feel we have a lot of guys who can make plays, which I'm excited about. A number of our young kids add to Tre and JerShon, who obviously were the playmakers for us last year. Now I feel with (combo guard) Bryant McIntosh, with Johnnie Vassar (a guard with jet speed), with (multi-talented forward) Vic Law, with (sweet-shooting swingman) Scottie Lindsey, we have guys that can make plays when things break down. That helps you create more offense when you're struggling."
But still.
"Our veterans are huge. We're excited about our young guys. They're hungry and they're talented and they're excited about being here. But I think the most important guys in our program are those older guys because they're the ones who're going to show the way. We have guys now who have played in this program for a lot of years. We have a number of veterans who's played a lot of Big Ten games. They know what it takes to play at this level.
"We need their leadership badly, and they've been great. They've been great with the younger guys. Our workouts have been spirited. Now we're just excited to get going."
