We’re halfway through the conference season going into Thursday’s game with Denver, and even though we’re nowhere close to where we wanted to be, we have an opportunity to build some momentum going into the Sun Belt Tournament with six of our final nine games at home.

With that being said, we have to show as a basketball team, that we are capable of protecting our home court. None of these games can be taken for granted. They are all going to be a challenge. Just because you’re playing at home doesn’t mean you are going to have success. No one is going to give us anything. What we get has to be earned, be it possession to possession, half to half, or game to game.

If you look back at our game at FAU, we’re up 10 points late in the first half, miss a three pointer that would have made it a 13-point ballgame, and then they go on a 5-0 run to finish the half. We’re still up five at halftime, but then we allow them to shoot 59 percent in the second half. I know I tend to sound redundant, but we have to be able to defend and rebound into the second half, most importantly in the last five or six minutes of a game. There’s nothing real complicated about it.

When you think about how close games are decided, all those games become possession games and in a possession game you have to be able to get stops, which are finished by defensive rebounds after a solid defensive possession. Last year we were extremely efficient in close games. We were a very sound defensive team, and that is what this team is in search of at this point.

We’ve got half of our conference schedule left, plus the conference tournament, and for us to have a chance going into the second half of conference play, we have to show that we can defend well into the second half, and we have to become a better rebounding team.

Louisiana-Lafayette, for example, was a game where we were able to outrebound them by three and we got a win. Against New Orleans, we outrebounded them by nine and had a chance to win in regulation and overtime.

We’ve continued to talk about this year’s tournament being really exciting because of the parity in the league. I don’t think that has ever been more apparent than the last two weeks of conference play. You can look at FIU and FAU going to Middle Tennessee and winning, and then the very next week Middle beats Western Kentucky at home on a Monday, wins at Louisiana-Monroe on Thursday, and then beats WKU in Bowling Green on Saturday. Another example is South Alabama beating No. 18 Florida before the Christmas break, and then losing to a very good Denver team by 23 points last week. There isn’t a dominant team in our league this year, and I think that will make for a very exciting tournament in Hot Springs for everyone involved.

The main thing that we have to do is make sure that we go into the tournament with some success, to build confidence from a team standpoint. That is what I want this team to focus on, that there is still hope if we can develop consistency on the defensive end. With six of our final nine games at home, we need to try to finish strong and carry some success into the conference tournament.

From an individual standpoint, Solomon Bozeman’s play has been extremely sound over the last four games since Lionel Foster went down with a broken hand. He has really stepped up as a leader both from a vocal standpoint and through his play. Over the last four games, starting with New Orleans, he’s 19-of-38 from the field (50 percent), 9-of-21 from three-point line (42.9 percent), and 15-of-18 from the free-throw line (83.3 percent). During that stretch he’s averaging 4.8 rebounds, 15.5 points and more importantly to me, he has 23 assists and only six turnovers. In those four games, you’re talking about a total of six turnovers for a guy playing 37.0 minutes per game.

With six of our final nine games at home, we really hope our fans can come out to the Jack Stephens Center and help us try to build some momentum heading into the Sun Belt Tournament.

January 11, 2010

Every year, when I meet with my team for the first time in July, I tell them that the ultimate success of every program in the country is determined by how well that team is able to handle adversity. Every team faces adversity at some point or another during the season, and our team has definitely had its share through 16 games.

Not that I’m trying to make excuses for where we are right now, but initially I think I may have underestimated what it meant to this team to lose Mike Smith. Not that Mike was putting up huge numbers or anything, but his leadership and toughness were invaluable.

The latest form of adversity came Thursday when Matt Mouzy had to have his appendix removed. Matt has been our most productive three-point shooter this season and I think we really felt the effects of not having him in the lineup against Middle Tennessee. As evidenced by our team going 4-of-19 from three-point range.

Lionel Foster and Solomon Bozeman have really become comfortable pushing the ball up the floor in transition and looking for Matt, and losing him obviously hurt our ability to score from three-point range. Opposing teams have to be aware of where Matt is on the floor, which opens up scoring opportunities for other players. We’ll certainly welcome Matt back as soon as he is able to return.

A perfect example of handling adversity is what happened at Tennessee this week. Bruce Pearl had to suspend four players for off court issues, and Tennessee turns around and beats No. 1 Kansas. You can’t use adversity as a crutch.

I believe our guys are playing extremely hard right now. We are making progress defensively, but aren’t able to sustain our defensive intensity from possession-to-possession, four-minute segments, and one half to the next. Saturday was a perfect example of that. We were very sharp and crisp in the first half defensively and held Middle Tennessee to 32 percent from the field. In the second half we weren’t nearly as efficient and they shot 57 percent. Credit has to be given to Kermit Davis and his team for making championship plays in the second half on the back end of a three-game road swing.

Our concern at the half was that we were outrebounded by five, and nine of their 22 rebounds were offensive. We knew coming in that Middle was a really good rebounding team. They had 16 offensive rebounds at Arkansas State on Thursday night and entered the game with a +8 rebounding margin in league games. We felt like we had to have a positive rebounding margin against them to have a chance to win, but we ended up minus-9.

We did a better job not giving up offensive rebounds in the second half, but because they shot the ball so well there weren’t many opportunities for them. A lot of it goes back to possessions where guys were too comfortable in the second half. We didn’t have good ball pressure. We didn’t make attempts to take much away – in terms of ball reversals, post entries and containing the basketball off the dribble.

Despite our rebounding problems, we led by two points at the half and were tied 37-all with about 13 to go in the second half before they went on their 17-0 run. If you look at this stretch of games, we’ve led at the half in four of our last seven games, and three of our five conference games. That is a situation where we must sustain defensive intensity.

The goal right now is to keep making progress in hopes of peaking at the end of the season. I think our tournament is going to be wide open. Five games into the conference season every team has a loss, so no one team is running away from the pack.

There is going to be an opportunity for a team that gets hot to play its way into the NCAA Tournament. As a team, we have to stay focused on improving our defensive consistency, as well as rebounding the ball.

With that being said, we have to become a more efficient offensive team as well. So often, we get bogged down with the dribble instead of getting the ball moving from side-to-side, which shifts the defense and opens up opportunities on ball reversal to play against close outs with good spacing. Any offensive scheme is looking for good spacing, with good ball movement and good player movement. You can’t have one without the other.

As we’ve become better at our transition game, the obvious is that it is keyed off of defensive stops. It’s hard to run consistently if you’re not getting stops, as evidenced by the first and second halves against Middle Tennessee.

We are making a concerted effort as a team to push the ball up the floor more often. We had some good opportunities in the first half, with Lionel pitching it ahead for Wayne Burton to finish, or Solomon playing off of good spacing after Lionel pitches it ahead. When you talk about getting up the floor and running, you have to have that first post player get up the floor to create space, which is something Wayne is getting better at. When you don’t have that first post running hard, the point guard runs right up on him and you have poor spacing which can result in turnovers.

Cutting down on turnovers is an area where we are improving. In conference play, we’re only averaging 11.8 turnovers per game, compared to 13.4 by our opponents. Those are winning numbers. On the other hand, we have a minus-7.6 rebounding margin in league games. While we’ve continued to get better defensively, there is still room for improvement.

I’ve been really encouraged with the play of Courtney Jackson since Mike went down. He’s averaging 27 minutes and 8 rebounds a game in conference play, and that’s what you hope for when someone goes down because it opens up opportunities for other players who haven’t seen extended minutes to that point. Another positive from the Middle Tennessee game was that Courtney was 5-of-7 from the free-throw line. Courtney becoming more comfortable at the foul line will only help our team’s chances to succeed. We’ve had Courtney and Wayne coming in daily to shoot an extra 200 foul shots to build repetition and confidence.

We’re flying to New Orleans Wednesday afternoon and will return to Little Rock Friday morning to host Louisiana-Lafayette on Saturday. Hope to see everyone at the Jack Stephens Center.

November 25, 2009

We were able to fly back to Little Rock after the game at Creighton on Sunday, which allowed us to immediately turn our focus to Louisiana Tech. Coach Joe Golding was able to begin preparation on his scouting report Sunday night as opposed to Monday afternoon.

Playing a Sunday afternoon game also allowed our guys to get back for class on Monday, which is even more important at this time of year as final exams get closer. The players were off all day on Monday and we came back Tuesday morning and had a good practice. They went to class Tuesday morning and then brought them back in the afternoon to go over tape of Louisiana Tech before heading to Ruston.

I still believe this basketball team is making improvements and continuing to get better. We are becoming a more sound rebounding team and a better defensive team. We’re still trying to become better at valuing the basketball and I think that is the most glaring area in need for improvement with our team. We have got to get to a point where we value the basketball better than we are now. We’re currently averaging 16.3 turnovers per game and our opponents are only averaging 11.8 per game. Those aren’t winnable numbers.

I think our shooting percentage from the free-throw line will continue to get better, as will our rebounding margin, which is at +2 right now. Rebounding margin has to be a focus Wednesday night against Louisiana Tech. They are an outstanding offensive rebounding team.

Looking back at the Creighton game, we talked an awful lot going in about toughness and poise to value the basketball. I felt like we handled their press at times, but our problem was our inability to sustain those times. We didn’t handle the press in the first 6-8 minutes of the game, but handled it extremely well to finish the half. It was the same story in the second half, where we weren’t able to handle the press at the start, and the four-minute segment at the start of the second half is important in every game you play.

From a rebounding standpoint, we had a +1 margin at the half, but gave up some offensive rebounds over the first three and a half minutes, including one off a free-throw situation which shouldn’t happen. We ended up with a minus-5 rebounding margin against a Creighton team that had been -5 on the year coming into Sunday’s game.

We talked a lot Tuesday morning about goals over the next four games. We have four games in the next eight days and we have goals we are looking at in terms of defensive field goal percentage, rebounding and turnover margin. Those are three critical areas for us if we are able to have success over the next four games. Our team goals are to have a defensive field goal percentage of 41 percent or less, a +4 rebounding margin and a positive turnover margin.

Those are three areas of great importance to this team. I really think these are realistic goals. In terms of defensive field goal percentage and rebounding margin, we want to raise the bar, but we’re only talking about a little bit of improvement. Our turnover margin is a negative right now, and I told our guys we need a plus anything. Whether it’s +1, +2 or +3, we just need to do a better job of valuing the basketball.

Wednesday’s game will be a challenge. Louisiana Tech is a team that is much improved. They are 3-1 coming in and we’re playing them in their home opener. They beat UT Pan American to start the season and beat Miami of Ohio by 12, which is a team that took Kentucky to the wire before losing by 2 on a last-second shot. They dropped a game at New Mexico but rebounded with a convincing win over Nicholls State.

Our three team goals have to be our main focus right now. However, we need more consistent play from an individual standpoint to become more efficient offensively. With that being said, value of the basketball, offensive spacing, and understanding of what we’re trying to accomplish on each possession is what I’m looking for. Right now, I think there are three guys on our team who have separated themselves from the group in my mind, and that’s Solomon Bozeman, Alex Garcia-Mendoza and Mike Smith.

When I say that, I’m not measuring them by their shooting percentages, I’m talking about separating themselves through their defensive intensity, understanding of what we want to accomplish on the offensive end, and what their responsibilities are in our defensive transition, etc. Those guys have the best understanding of what their roles are in what we’re trying to do as a team at this point.

With that being said, we have other guys who have shown some positive things, but we’re in search of more consistent play from those individuals, which will equate to more consistent play as a team.

Matt Mouzy shot the ball really well at Creighton, but we need Matt to continue to improve on his off-the-ball defense, his positioning and his commitment to blocking out. Matt certainly isn’t the only one in that regard, but I have high expectations for Matt, being someone who played extended minutes last year and has been here for three years. He is going to be an integral part of this team. His continued improvement on the defensive end, as well as his ability to block out and value the basketball offensively, is needed for our team’s long-term success.

Kelson Stewart has really show some improvement over the last week. It started with the St. Gregory’s game and he followed that up with a couple of good practices leading up to Creighton where he shot the ball extremely well. Kelson is in the same boat as Matt right now, in that he needs to improve on his off-the-ball defense, positioning and blocking out on the defensive glass, which is something we all need to get better at if we want to reach our team goals. We have to have a commitment on the floor from five guys on the defensive end to block out and rebound each and every time.

Ricky Davison gave us a spark at Creighton by stepping in to the game and hitting three shots in a short period of time. He followed that up with a solid practice Tuesday morning and could be in line for more minutes.

Having started the year with four of our first five on the road, we’re looking forward to playing at home over the next two weeks. We’ve got five consecutive home games before we open up Sun Belt Conference play at South Alabama on ESPN2. That’s still a long ways off though. Obviously the game in front of us is the most important and that’s where our focus lies.

I hope everyone has Happy Thanksgiving!

November 19, 2009

It has been brought to my attention that some of our fans may have misinterpreted something I said to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette recently, so I wanted to take a moment to clear up any misunderstandings.

My quote in the paper was “Nobody cares. I don’t care and I don’t expect our fans to care” in response to a question about the possibility we could struggle in our first three road games against tough opponents.

In saying “nobody cares”, I was saying that nobody cares who we are playing against or that we’re playing back-to-back games against Tulsa and St. Gregory’s. We are expected to come out and compete every night. We will not accept a lack of mental focus and/or a lack of effort just because we’re playing on back-to-back days.

I’m never going to give myself, my staff or my team an out to use as an excuse for not being prepared and mentally focused, whether its travel or our opponent. Mental focus and effort are constants that we should have every time we come to the floor. There is never an acceptable reason for myself or my basketball team to not be sharp and mentally focused.

That’s what nobody cares about. Nobody cares about excuses like playing a tough opponent or being tired because you had to play two games in two days.

Obviously, I care greatly about the success of this program and anyone who thinks differently is completely mistaken.

November 11, 2009

Obviously the premise of everything we are doing in practice right now is done in an effort to get better on the defensive end. As I said after Sunday’s game, I’ve known for 19 practices that we’ve needed to get better defensively. I do feel like we are making progress, although it is coming at a slower pace than I would like. But it’s different with every team and certainly isn’t unexpected with us having six new guys.

We’ve made a lot of improvement on our initial rotations to get the ball stopped from a defensive standpoint. Where it’s really important for us to take another step now, is on our second and third rotations. We also need to improve on containing the basketball. We want to pressure the ball to a level where you don’t lose containment, and that is different with every player. Someone like Lionel Foster can pressure and maintain containment at a higher level than one of our post players. That’s the area from a coaching standpoint that we are constantly harping on. Right now we are losing too much containment. Too often the ball is going to the paint off the dribble and breaking us down defensively, which puts added pressure on our second and third rotation. With that being said, you know you have to be sound from a defensive standpoint to cover those rotations and we aren’t right now. That was my biggest concern when we returned to practice on Monday.

As I’ve said all along, I do feel like we have a chance to be a good basketball team in time. When exactly that will happen is unknown right now. I do know this though, we have to become more solid defensively and become a better rebounding team to get where we want to go.

I’ve said this numerous times, but I really believe that we are going to score the ball better than we did last year. I thought that was evident on Sunday with us shooting 49 percent as a team. Our problem Sunday wasn’t on the offensive end. Granted, we had 20 turnovers and need to limit that, but our biggest area of concern was on the defensive end.

As crazy as this is to say, with where my concerns have been through our first 19 practices and our lack of being able to sustain defensive intensity and focus, we may look back in time and say that this was the best thing that could have happened to us.

If you look back two years ago, Michigan State lost an exhibition to Grand Valley State and went on to advance to the Sweet 16. That same year, Ohio State lost an exhibition game and went on to win the NIT. Not to say that we’re going to have that kind of success this season, but this stuff happens unfortunately. The deciding factor will be how we use this adverse situation to grow as a team.

And I’m certainly not taking anything away from Jeff Morgan and his program. He does a phenomenal job and this is why I’ve chosen to play them over the last couple of years. I want to play an exhibition game against a team that I know is going to be well coached and is going to challenge our guys. That’s what Harding is every year. They had some injuries last year and we beat them by 12. In 2005 it was a six-point game. I like playing Jeff’s teams for that reason. You can’t just show up and get a win. You have to bring some mental intensity, toughness and focus to the court or you’re going to get beat.

As we talked coming into the year, Solomon Bozeman is someone that we feel can get the ball to the paint off the dribble and get to the foul line. He is a very good free-throw shooter, which he showed on Sunday by making 13-of-14. I thought Mike Smith’s effort on the offensive end was also encouraging. Mike to this point has been our most solid defensive guy from a shell-principle standpoint. Not that he’s been perfect, but he’s been the best to this point. As I told our guys Monday while watching the game tape, everyone from 1-to-12 needs to raise the bar in terms of expectations of self on the defensive end. We can’t pin our shortcomings on one or two guys, it is everybody. I think our guys realize that and that’s one of the things that’s encouraging to me. They weren’t sitting in the locker room pointing fingers after the game on Sunday. Each one had the mindset in practice on Monday to take responsibility from an individual standpoint and work on improving.

At this point, I think it is really important for us to continue to look at ourselves. Obviously, we’ll spend a lot of time going over Ole Miss from a scouting standpoint and go over their personnel with our guys, but I think we need to be much more concerned with how we defend and rebound instead of getting too caught up in our opponents right now. Obviously there will always be several things we will try to take away from our opponents in a scout, but I don’t think we can get spread so thin thinking about Ole Miss that we lose our core from a defensive and rebounding standpoint.

Ole Miss, in my opinion, is going to be a top-25 team this year. They’ve got phenomenal guard play with two guys making the SEC preseason team. They are a very good offensive rebounding team and will be very difficult to guard off the dribble. They’re also very well coached. Andy Kennedy does a great job coaching them. They had all those injuries last year and they still went 7-9 in the SEC and 16-15 overall while advancing to the NIT.

With that said, our main focus has to be to continue to make strides everyday. That is one of the oldest coaching clichés in the book, but it has never been more fitting than right now.

We’re heading to Oxford on Thursday. After that we hit the road to take on Tulsa on Tuesday, Nov. 17 at 1 p.m., in a game which will be televised by ESPN as part of the network’s 24-hour College Hoops Tip-Off Marathon. We’ll return home on Wednesday, Nov. 18 against St. Gregory’s and I hope everyone can make it out to the Jack Stephens Center that night.

Lastly I would like to thank UALR Sports Information Director Joe Angolia. Joe does a great job of promoting the program and has been instrumental in getting my website up to date more often.

November 2, 2009

This is a big week for us leading up to our exhibition game on Sunday. Our guys’ effort has been really good to this point and I don’t feel like we are that far off from where we need to be defensively. Of course I do have some concerns after going through our scrimmage on Sunday, but we have improved in some areas that were of greater concern to me 10 days ago.

For instance, 10 days ago we didn’t have any urgency in our defensive transition to get back, get the ball stopped and locate. We’ve gotten better at that. We’ve also gotten better with our half court defense. When someone has been broken down off the dribble, we’ve gotten better in the first rotation as far as getting the ball stopped outside of the paint, but we’re still not very good in that second or third rotation.

That’s a normal progression for a team with six new guys. I have some serious concerns at this point because obviously I would like to be much further along defensively than where we are now. In comparison, it’s easy to remember where we were last year at this time with an established team, but it’s a little harder to remember where we were two years ago when we were in a similar situation.

With all that being said, I still stand by what I’ve said before in that we are a better shooting team and that is encouraging. However, we are not a good enough offensive team that we can afford to not improve defensively and have success. We can’t survive on shooting alone. We have to continue to get better at both ends of the floor obviously, but most importantly on the defensive end.

Another concern of mine is rebounding. We have been a solid rebounding team the last couple of years, but are not as sound this year at this point. That’s an area where Montrell Thornton factors into the equation. What I have to decide is whether the upside Montrell brings to the table from a rebounding standpoint balances against where he is at this point in understanding what we want on the offensive and defensive end. Does his impact from a rebounding standpoint outweigh his unfamiliarity with our system?

There are many different pieces to the puzzle and a guy who can do something really well obviously enhances his opportunities of getting in the mix. That was evident last year with Matt Mouzy’s situation. He shot the ball extremely well for us and his ability to bring that to the table allowed him to get on the floor.

With that being said, we have more guys that can shoot the ball this year, which raises the expectations on what a guy has to do on the other end of the floor to get playing time. When you have one guy that shoots it better than the rest, there’s some leniency in regards to the other areas of his game. But when you have five or six guys that can shoot it, that raises the competition for playing time because you have greater expectations on what that player needs to do on the other end of the floor.

The encouraging thing for me following our scrimmage is that we now have a better idea of where we are and what we have to improve on, and we have a week to focus and work on those things.

I felt like we were okay defensively early on, but when fatigue set in we couldn’t sustain our defensive intensity, our rotations and our on-the-ball pressure. Our inability to remain focused in those areas goes back to our mental toughness as a team and our toughness level across the board.

Toughness can be misconstrued from a player’s standpoint as not backing down from an opponent, and that has nothing to do with what we’re talking about. When we talk about toughness we mean when fatigue sets in over the last 10 minutes of a game are you mentally tough enough to withstand and continue to do what you did in the first 30 minutes. That’s where we need to continue to get better, like a lot of teams at this point in the year.

I was very encouraged by how we shared the basketball. We have more guys that can score than we have recently and our guys have done a good job getting the ball to open teammates.

A lot of our fans are unfamiliar with our new guys at this point in the season so I want to take a minute to talk about each one.

Alex Garcia-Mendoza is a 6-3 junior from Northeastern Junior College that really knows how to play. He has a good pace to his game, and actually shoots the ball better than I expected from the three-point line. I thought he was going to be more of a mid-range scorer, but he has actually shot it fairly well from three-point range. I think he could potentially become the guy on our team that gets closest to what we had in John Fowler from a defensive standpoint. He really brings good toughness to the table.

Montrell Thornton is a 6-7 junior from Southern Union State. He is a guy that can really rebound the ball. He is definitely going through a bit of a transition period right now, as most junior-college players do coming in, but he has demonstrated that he has a knack for rebounding the ball.

Solomon Bozeman sat out last season after transferring here from the University of South Florida. Solomon has been really good our last three practices. His defensive intensity has picked up, as has his ability to value the basketball. That is something we have really tried to harp on with Solomon and Lionel Foster, as all coaches do with their point guards. The number one key for those guys is to value the basketball and limit turnovers.

Nikola Cicic is a 6-5 freshman guard from Rise Academy in Philadelphia. Nikola has shot the ball extremely well through the first 15 practices. Once again talking about transitions, he’s adjusting to college basketball after playing at the prep and high school level. His situation is similar to what Lionel and Courtney Jackson went through a year ago, in that he needs to work on improving his consistency. It’s important for him to bring a consistent effort to the floor. As with all freshmen, he needs to find a way to keep his motor running and try to avoid the ups and downs that most freshmen go through as best as possible. There’s a natural progression for freshmen as they learn to play extremely hard on a consistent basis.

Marlon Louzeiro is a 6-7 forward from Midland College who is continuing to play himself into shape. His minutes will only go up as he continues to become better acclimated to what we want to do from an offensive and defensive standpoint.

Ricky Davison is a 6-2 guard from Southern Union State and has been a pleasant surprise in that I think he has the ability to play some point guard, which I wasn’t sure about coming in. He has shot the ball well so far and could potentially become a really good on-the-ball defender down the line.

As far as our returning players go, I think it’s worth noting the differences in Lionel Foster from a year ago to today. His conditioning is much better and he’ll be able to play more consecutive minutes because of that. He is down to 190 pounds after playing at 204 pounds a year ago. He has been very consistent with his on-the-ball pressure and his ability to defend the basketball. He also sees the floor extremely well and gives it to guys in spots where they can be successful.

I continue to be encouraged with Mike Smith’s progress. He’s in the best shape of his four years with us and has continued to be a very positive leader for our young guys. I expect that he’ll have a good senior year.

Courtney Jackson is coming off of freshman year where he played in 31 games. He enters his sophomore year having gained 15 pounds in the offseason and is playing with a lot of confidence right now. The thing that I like about Courtney is his versatility. With the added weight and strength, and I have to give credit to strength coach John Barron for that, Courtney will be able to better defend post players on the inside yet still play on the perimeter.

With the start of the season right around the corner, things are definitely picking up around here. We also have signing day coming up a week from Wednesday, so we’ll likely have an announcement about a couple of new Trojans.

Hope to see everyone out on Sunday for our exhibition against Harding at 2 p.m.

October 27, 2009

As the season draws near we are continuing to have good, intense practices in anticipation of our season opener at Ole Miss on Nov. 13. The Sun Belt Conference released its preseason coaches poll on Tuesday and we were picked to finish fourth in the West Division. I’ve never been one to put much stock in preseason polls, but that’s hardly surprising after losing First Team All-Sun Belt selection Shane Edwards and Defensive Player of the Year John Fowler. We are obviously much more concerned with postseason standings than preseason polls. Two years ago we were picked sixth in the West and went on to go 20-11 and earn a share of the division championship.

I really think our first 10 practices have gone well. Anytime you have six new guys, including Solomon in that group, every day is a huge learning experience as you find out more about your guys and they get a better understanding of what we expect from them. One of the areas we need to improve on is paying better attention to details, especially on the defensive end, but that is simply a product of their newness to our system. We have to get better at applying consistent ball pressure and improve our rotations to close gaps. The ball is going to the paint way to often on the defensive end, whether off the dribble or the pass. We also need to continue to get better at rebounding the ball on the defensive end.

Those are areas that we have managed to improve on over our first 10 practices and I’m not surprised at where we are with six new guys. The important thing for me is that our guys continue to be open-minded about getting better every time they come to the floor, and they have to this point.

Like I said before, I really like this group. I like their togetherness and their work ethic. Monday was probably our most competitive day in practice to this point. I think we saw some of those new guys really compete. In particular, I felt like Nikola and Montrell had their best practices to this point, and that’s one of the things you find as you get closer to Nov. 13. Guys start to recognize where they are. As I’ve said all along, we’re going to play seven or eight guys, maybe nine, so we will more than likely have four guys that won’t play.

The new guys have to figure out what’s really important in that situation, and what is really important to us right now is our defensive transition and our ability to get consecutive stops. The only way to do that is to keep the ball out of the paint. You can’t have all kinds of holes in your defensive and allow the ball to be dribbled to the paint. We have to contain the dribble and we have to do a better job rebounding on the defensive end.

As I said earlier, I think we are getting better at that. But as expected coming in, we have a lot of work to do. I think that all goes back to where we were picked in the preseason poll, which was fairly accurate going into the season considering what we lost and all of our unknowns at this point.

We’re just about 10 days away from our exhibition game against Harding on Sunday, Nov. 8. After the game the Tip-In Club will have its annual “Meet the Trojans” event at Derek Fisher Court. I hope to see many of you there.

October 12, 2009

It is hard to believe that the season is right around the corner. I’m excited about getting started this Friday with the first day of official practice. It’s like I told our guys in a team meeting the other day, you progress through different levels of intensity throughout the course of the season. You start near the bottom with summer workouts and then it gradually builds as you work your way up to the start of the season, conference play and then conference tournament time.

We definitely have our work cut out for us this season with our non-conference schedule. I honestly think that we have at least five, and possibly as many as seven teams, that could end up ranked in the top 80-100 in the final RPI poll.

A lot of people may think we didn’t exactly take the safest route with the flow of our schedule to start the season, with our team playing four of its first five games on the road, but I felt like the recruiting positives of being on national television outweighed the negatives. Our team has six newcomers and just one starter back from last season, but it’s hard to pass up the chance to play Tulsa on ESPN as part of the College Hoops Tip-Off Marathon, even if that means you have to open the year at Ole Miss.

As I alluded to in the summer, John Barron has been very impressed with the work ethic, promptness and attention to detail from our new guys, and I’ve certainly seen that throughout the course of our fall workouts so far. This group has been very enthusiastic and eager to work at getting better each and every day, just as they were throughout the summer with coach Barron.

When you start talking about the value of offseason workouts, it ties into the old coaching cliché that players are made in the offseason but teams are made during the season.

We need someone to step up this season like Shane Edwards did a year ago. He wasn’t on any preseason All-Conference teams entering his senior year, but he put the work in to develop as a player and it paid off for him. He gained 26 pounds from the time he arrived on campus as a junior to the start of his senior year, and he worked extremely hard on his game in the offseason. He worked in the weight room and was able to get some more arc on his shot, and because of his outstanding habits and work ethic he became a First Team All-Sun Belt Conference selection.

We have had some guys who have had some really good offseasons. Solomon Bozeman works extremely hard on his game on his own time, as does Matt Mouzy, Courtney Jackson, Lionel Foster and Alex Garcia-Mendoza. That’s encouraging from a coach’s standpoint.

The NCAA gives us eight hours a week at this time in the season, two of which can be spent with the ball on the court. We are restricted to small group workouts up until Sept. 15. After that, you can work as a team for those two-hour periods. However, two hours doesn’t give you enough time to work on all phases of the game, and what I’m constantly stressing to our guys is that they have to get their shooting in on their own after that Sept. 15 date. They need to be disciplined enough to get in here on their own and get their shots up.

The work they’ve put in with coach Barron has really paid off for a number of our guys. When coach Barron weighed these guys on Oct. 2, Mike Smith weighed 260 pounds after entering last year’s preseason conditioning near 300 pounds. Lionel Foster weighed 190 pounds after playing last year in the 202-204 range, which will only make him quicker with the basketball.

With several of our players there will be a direct correlation between their minutes and their weight and conditioning. When we first weighed Montrell Thornton in the summer we said we wanted to get him back down to 240 pounds and that’s where he is at now. Marlon Louzeiro and Derrick Bails are both in the 260 range, so we’ve been able to eliminate our 285-295 pound players. If guys can stay in that range, and maybe even come down a little more, it will be to the benefit of them as individuals and to our team.

Just from working with our guys in the short time we have, I still believe we will be a better three-point shooting team. I think we have 5-6 guys who could potentially shoot in the mid-to-upper 30’s from three-point range. There are a lot of factors involved in that though, like good shot selection.

I think we’ve gotten better from a defensive standpoint in the three weeks we’ve been able to work as a team. What we tried to do from Aug. 24 to Sept. 15 was straight shooting and footwork drills. Starting Sept. 15 we began to incorporate some of our defensive schemes and then we came back and have really started to implement a lot of our 4-on-4 stuff from a defensive standpoint, as well as some of our offensive stuff.

With five new guys, I went back to what we did two years ago in that we’re using these sessions as prep work for the start of official practice. The last few individual sessions we’ve had have been short, condensed versions of our full practices. That allows our new guys to gain some experience from a drill-recognition standpoint, and we coaches won’t have to slow things down and explain them once practice starts.

I believe these 13 guys get along extremely well, so hopefully our chemistry will be good. They are a very responsible group for the most part. But there’s a flip side to having six new guys, in that you don’t know how they’re going to mesh with our returning guys. How quickly it all comes together is unknown.

The two biggest concerns for me heading into the season are where will are leadership come from on a daily basis and what will our level of toughness be as a team. We knew what we had last year with four outstanding seniors, but there is a little bit of the unknown surrounding this year’s team heading into the start of practice.

In addition to conducting workouts with our team, we’ve also been hard at work on the recruiting trails. We brought three prospective student-athletes onto campus for official visits, and I felt like all three of those visits went extremely well.

Our current players are very involved when we bring guys in. I feel like it is our staff’s job to get the prospective student-athletes here to campus and sell them on everything we have to sell, and it is our player’s job to make it an enjoyable weekend. The hope is that our guys make each one of them feel like an important part of our basketball family, and make them feel comfortable with our program.

Well, that’s all for now. Like I said, we’re really looking forward to the start of practice on Friday. We open the season Nov. 8 with a home exhibition game against Harding University and then head to Ole Miss on Nov. 13. I’ll check back in before the season starts.

August 12, 2009

It’s been a busy summer at UALR, as always. Between summer camp and recruiting trips there hasn’t been a lot of down time, but we’re extremely excited about the upcoming 2009-10 season.

We really had a good summer of camp. We had three week-long sessions and the second week of camp was the biggest turnout we’ve had in my nine years at UALR. We ended up with over 540 campers for the summer. There were a lot of enthusiastic kids here learning the game of basketball, and Chris Lowry and Marlon Terry both did an outstanding job running things.

The thing about camp that I always like is that it enables young kids to interact with our players, and gives our players an opportunity to work with kids. Our guys can get on the floor and teach the game that they love. Some of them will go on to coach basketball as a career and this gives them invaluable experience.

We’ve been hard at it on the recruiting trails and were able to target some young men that we wanted to follow and still want to follow. This is a little bit of a different year for us in that we only have two seniors going into the 2009-10 season. We wanted to spend a lot of time looking at the 2011 class.

We were able to go a lot of different places. We were over in Tulsa at the Junior College Shootout, down in Denton, spent some time in Orlando at two of the biggest tournaments of the summer, and traveled to Vegas, where there were four tournaments going on at a time.

I thought assistant coach Joe Golding did an excellent job organizing the recruiting schedule, so that we could maximize our days on the road and see as many kids as possible that are on our radar. Joe Kleine, Charles Cunningham, Joe Golding and I were able to turn up a lot of new kids, especially in that 2011 class. The 2011 class could have seven available spots with us having seven seniors on the 2010-11 roster. It will be very similar to my second year as head coach, when we graduated seven players off our second division championship team.

We would like to get a kid with some length in the upcoming signing class and have also looked to sign a point guard or combo guard. With that said, we’re not going to turn away a kid who we think could be a really good player just because he doesn’t fit into one of those categories.

While our guys were here for summer class, they were able to spend a lot of time working with coach John Barron. I’ve never seen him as excited as he has been this summer in talking about our new guys. He is continuously praising the work ethic and punctuality they’ve shown throughout the dog days of summer. Our returning guys have also been really good in their summer workouts according to coach Barron, which makes me excited about the start of individual workouts on August 24. Coach Barron tested the players on Aug. 6 and was really encouraged about the progress they’ve made as a group. He said there wasn’t a single guy who didn’t show improvement from the previous test.

The final summer session ended last week, which gave our players a chance to go home for roughly 10 days before reporting back to school on Aug. 18. Orientation for all student-athletes is scheduled for Aug. 19, with the first day of classes set for Aug. 20. It’s really a nice break for our guys before the grind of the season starts and gives them a chance to go home and visit their friends and family.

With us having so many new players this season, we’re really fortunate that we have seven weeks of individual workouts this year – as opposed to just five weeks last season. That will really benefit us in getting our new guys acclimated to what we’re trying to do as a team. One of the most important things for me is that we get our guys in excellent shape early on, and then allow them to stay fresh come January, February and March. You can’t afford to burn them out at the start of the season.

The biggest question mark for our team going into this season is “where will our leadership come from?” We had four outstanding seniors last season who shouldered that responsibility, and now someone has to step up and fill that void. The second most obvious question about this year’s team is “what kind of toughness will we have?” We had an enormous amount of toughness last year, and that was a major contributor to our 23-8 record. We went 9-1 last season in games decided by five points or less, and that’s a testament to that group’s ability to make plays late when the game was on the line.

On the other hand, this year’s team should be able to shoot the basketball better than we have in the past. When you combine some of our new guys with Matt Mouzy, we should have the ability to score effectively from the perimeter. Anytime you have new guys though there will be a learning curve in the transition, so it’s all a matter of how quickly we can help them adjust. That will determine what kind of success we have early on. As I always preach to my teams, our success will ultimately be determined by how well we handle adversity.

Hopefully we’ll be able to finalize our schedule real soon and release it to the public. Until then, you can follow me at www.twitter.com/ShieldsUALR for all the latest updates in Trojan basketball.

June 11, 2009

In looking back at the 2008-09 season, I think it is impossible to understate just how much the four seniors meant to the success of this basketball team from a leadership standpoint.

Shane Edwards, John Fowler, Brandon Patterson and LaMarvon Jackson each led by example and became more vocal leaders throughout the course of the season. They were the primary reason that we were able to win 23 games, another division championship and tie Western Kentucky for the best record in the Sun Belt Conference.

Of the 31 games we played last year, all against Division I opponents, 15 were at home, 14 were true road games and two were neutral site games. For this team to win 23 games against that kind of schedule speaks volumes for their character, toughness and togetherness. It all started with our senior leadership. Those four guys were all about being a part of something bigger than themselves. They didn’t care about individual stats. They just wanted to win basketball games and go as far as they could go.

This group was able to break two significant school records by winning 15 Sun Belt Conference games and 11 of 14 true road games. You don’t win on the road without a lot of mental toughness on your basketball team, and it all started with those seniors.

I was really excited about everything this group accomplished, and that was the reason for the extreme disappointment in the way our season ended against South Alabama and our not making it into the NIT.

From an individual standpoint, Shane Edwards really developed into one of the top players in the Sun Belt last season, and that was evident in him earning First Team All-Sun Belt honors. He is someone who showed up from junior college weighing 185 pounds, and he had a bit of an adjustment period during his first year at the Division I level.

He really played well the last 10-12 games of his junior year, though, and that carried over into the summer, as he had one of the best offseasons that we’ve had from an individual standpoint since I’ve been here. He committed to the weight program that John Barron put together for him, ate right, worked out daily and showed back up weighing 216 pounds.

John Fowler was also recognized by our league’s coaches and media members at the end of the year, and I don’t think there was a more deserving honor for an individual than John winning the Defensive Player of the Year award.

John’s ability to defend multi-positional players is what made him so special in his two years here. He can guard anyone from the 1-4, whether it be bigger forwards or point guards. He has such a passion for what he does on the defensive side of the ball, and that all comes down to heart and toughness.

We’ll definitely miss those four seniors next year, but I’m optimistic about what we have back and the players we’ve signed. One of the guys we will be counting on next year is Solomon Bozeman, and I can tell you that he’s been spending a tremendous amount of time in the Jack Stephens Center working on his game.

Solomon transferred to UALR and sat out last season after playing two years in the BIG EAST Conference for South Florida. A redshirt year is difficult for anyone. You go from playing and getting excited about game preparation, to sitting on the sideline and watching. With that said, I think Solomon has made the best use of his redshirt year of any player I’ve had.

Coach Barron is extremely excited about Solomon’s enthusiasm every day he comes into the weight room, and his passion to get bigger and stronger. I think we’ll see that hard work pay big dividends next fall. Solomon is a true gym rat. Being a coach’s son, he lives, breathes and sleeps basketball.

Speaking of next season, I think we are really close to being able to finish up the schedule. I would hope that we can have it done before we coaches go on the road in July. The most exciting thing is that we have Memphis coming back to Little Rock. I said it when we first announced the series with Coach Calipari, but for him to agree to a home-and-home series, coming off a Final Four appearance, was huge for our program.

We’ve also got games this year against Missouri State, Oral Roberts and Louisiana Tech, each of which is in the second year of a four-year series. Missouri State and ORU will both be coming to the Jack Stephens Center this year, which is further evidence of our goal to get attractive, regional games against quality opponents at home. We’re trying to play as many home-and-home series’ that will be appealing to our fans as we can.

Postseason play is where we all want to go. The ultimate destination being the NCAA Tournament and that is where we are still striving to go. Though we haven’t accomplished that goal yet, I’m really proud of what this program has accomplished in my six years as head coach. If you look at overall wins in the Sun Belt Conference, this program ranks third in overall wins with 105, behind only South Alabama (112) and Western Kentucky (136). We are also third in victories in conference play as well with 58, behind South Alabama (63) and WKU (72).

In addition to winning four division titles in six years, the first two of which came as members of the East Division, these four seniors were responsible for us posting back-to-back 20-win seasons, which is something that hasn’t happened at UALR since the 1989-90 and 1990-91 seasons.

This program’s achievements extend into the classroom as well. Every player who has exhausted his eligibility during my time as head coach has graduated. LaMarvon Jackson graduated in the spring and that 100 percent graduation rate will stay the same after Shane Edwards, Brandon Patterson and John Fowler graduate this summer. Our multi-year APR of 962 ranks second in the Sun Belt Conference and is well above the national average of 933.

Until next time, everybody make sure to get out and enjoy your summer.

December 9, 2008

Seven games into the season, I’m really excited about our basketball team being 6-1, especially with four of those games played on the road. Our main thing is to make sure we stay hungry as a team. We can’t have complacency set in. That is a thing that every coach fights, and with us having the leadership we have from our seniors I don’t see that happening.

The most obvious example of our strong senior leadership this season is John Fowler. I don’t know if I’ve had a guy who consistently plays as hard as he does day in and day out. So often we talk about what guys bring to the table on game day, but John Fowler brings that high intensity level and effort every time he steps on the court, whether its individual improvement, practice or games, and you just don’t see that with most guys.

Brandon Patterson is another senior who has shown strong leadership qualities and given us length on the perimeter from a defensive standpoint. He has also been very solid with the basketball and is our only guy with a positive assist-to-turnover ratio at this point. The leadership that those two guys have shown by example, more so than being vocal leaders, has been invaluable.

The most noticeable example of their leadership through example following last night’s win at Oral Roberts, is the job John Fowler did with his assignment of guarding Robert Jarvis, who was averaging 20 points per game and scored 34 against Missouri earlier this year. Jarvis is a prolific scorer who can really shoot the ball from deep range, and John did a great job defending him, limiting his catches and contesting on the three-point line. When John picked up his second foul, Brandon picked up Jarvis and he ended up going 2-for-13 from the floor and 1-for-9 from three-point range. That’s the kind of things I’m talking about from a leadership standpoint with those two guys.

We went into the ORU game keying on Jarvis, Dominique Morrison and Kyron Stokes. All three of those guys can really score, with Jarvis being their top guy, and those three were a combined 3-for-23 from the floor. I think that was the biggest key to our win.

Shane Edwards has also taken on a greater role for us this season. The biggest key with Shane is him being aggressive. When’s he’s aggressive and not fading away and shying away from contact, he has been very good, as he was to start the season at Cal Poly and Pepperdine. In the Harding exhibition game, I felt like he avoided contact and was worried about getting his shot blocked. Shane is a real important element for this basketball team. When Shane plays well, we are effective offensively. We need to get production from that four spot, as we did last night at Oral Roberts.

With the win over ORU, we’ve now won games against the preseason favorites in the Summit League and the Missouri Valley Conference. Creighton was picked to win the MVC this season and has been a top-25 program over the past several years under Dana Altman. We all know the phenomenal job he has done, and that was definitely a quality win for our program. It remains to be seen how good of a win that will be for us, based on what we do from here on. You always want to position yourself where you have a quality wins and “top 50” wins and I feel certain Creighton will end up in that range.

We’ve got three of our next four games at home heading into the Christmas break, and we really want finish with some positive momentum. There isn’t a game on our schedule that you can pencil in as a definite win, so we need to continue to be mentally prepared and keep an edge about us.

Wright State has there top two scorers back from last year’s team, which won 21 games. They are extremely well coached, and even though they’ve struggled early, they have good experience and scoring on their team. Northern Illinois is a team that we definitely have respect for, having lost to them last season at their place. Ricardo Patton does a great job and will have his guys ready to play.

On Dec. 17 we play a Memphis team coming off a Final Four appearance and a national runner-up finish. John Calipari is one of the best coaches in country and has one of the most talented teams around, so we know what an unbelievable challenge that will be at their place.

We finish off the four-game stretch with Arkansas State, our biggest Sun Belt Conference rival. John Brady has those guys playing extremely well right now, and they are defending as well as anyone in our league.

I’m hopeful that we will be able to continue to build on what we have done up to this point, and go into the Christmas break with some momentum.

I think it is really important from a scheduling standpoint for our guys to spend as much time with their families over the Christmas break as possible, and we always managed to do that even if it means losing a practice or two. We always try to get our guys home at least two days before Christmas, and have them come back the day after. I don’t want any of our guys traveling on Christmas Day and we’ve never had to do that in my six years as head coach.

This year, our guys will go home on Dec. 21 and will be able to stay with their families through Christmas Day, returning to Little Rock on Dec. 26. We play Rice on Dec. 28, so from a coaching standpoint you may look at it and say ‘well, we could use another day of practice in preparation for that game’, but I think the benefits of them coming back rejuvenated, fresh and anxious to get back to work after spending a good amount of quality time with their families far outweighs the negative of losing a practice day.

Rice will be our final non-conference game of the season, as we head into Sun Belt Conference play full-time beginning Dec. 31 against ULM. I think our league is wide open this season, as it has been in past years.

We coaches voted Middle Tennessee the preseason favorite in the Sun Belt at the league’s annual Media Days in Hot Springs. They’ve got a lot of experienced players back and are an extremely well coached team under Kermit Davis.

You can look at the preseason voting by the coaches and make an argument for any numbers of teams. You’ve got North Texas with Collin Dennis and Josh White back. Louisiana-Lafayette has a ton of young, talented skill players who can really shoot the basketball. South Alabama definitely warrants consideration with the job Ronnie Arrow and his staff does. Western Kentucky showed how capable they are with their win over No. 3 Louisville, and Ken McDonald has done a great job already. Often times the transition can be tough for new coaches, but it hasn’t been for Ken and John Brady at Arkansas State.

That’s all for now. Check back for future updates and make sure to keep up with all the latest in Trojan Basketball at www.ualrtrojans.com.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and yours.
 

October 1, 2008

Fall practice is right around the corner, and everyone at UALR is gearing up for another exciting season as we try to win our fourth Sun Belt Conference division championship in five years.

One of the most important things for the continued progression of our program is our guys not being satisfied with where we were last spring. We continually stress to our players how important it is from them to stay hungry and keep an edge about themselves.

Strength coach John Barron has been a huge asset to our program over the last three years in the development of our players. He is very enthusiastic with our guys and is someone who always looks at the glass as half full. He is all about helping young people achieve their goals, and I have never been around a guy who gets more excited than John does about players showing improvement in their workouts.

We have guys like Solomon Bozeman and Matt Mouzy who are dunking the basketball, when I never would have thought that possible a year ago. A lot of the credit has to go to the work ethic of those guys, but credit also has to be given to coach Barron for his role in their development.

John is a phenomenal strength coach and our guys have made great strides during the offseason. Shane Edwards, for example, showed up from junior college weighing 185 pounds, and came back this offseason weighing 214 pounds. That is a perfect example of a guy buying into your strength and conditioning program, and your strength coach doing a superb job.

Our guys, led by our four seniors, made sure we had a great offseason. I really think that has continued throughout our fall workouts in weights, conditioning and individual improvement. We have had an outstanding offseason and that is a testament to the leadership of our seniors John Fowler, Brandon Patterson, Shane Edwards and LaMarvon Jackson. I’m really excited to get going with the start of practice coming up. I like our guys’ work ethic and togetherness, and I think they have all competed extremely well in their individual improvement sessions.

I’m also really excited about the five new guys we brought into our program. They all bring something unique to our team from a basketball standpoint. Curtis Jackson has an ability to shoot the ball really well from the three-point line. Lionel Foster is a heady point guard with strength and size. He’s not someone we brought in and have to worry about adding strength and weight. He can defend the basketball and really sets guys up from a point guard standpoint.

Courtney Jackson is a guy who, had we not signed him in the early period, we more than likely wouldn’t have gotten him. Courtney had phenomenal numbers in high school. He averaged 23 points and 15 rebounds as a senior and was an All-State and an All-Region selection. He brings a unique ability to the table, to play as hard as he plays as a freshman. I’ve seen that in individual workouts and conditioning. So often there is a transition period from high school to division I basketball, but I feel like he is someone who will be in the mix early on in his career. He is also very explosive, can rebound the ball and can score from different areas on the floor.

Wayne brings length to our front line, which is something we really didn’t have last year. He led the West Texas Junior College Athletic Conference in blocked shots last year, which is pretty impressive considering that league produced the past two junior college national champions. Solomon is a young man that we are very familiar with, having tried to recruit him out of high school. He’s transferring in after two years at South Florida and will have two years left after sitting out this season. He has a very high basketball I.Q., values the basketball and has the ability to shoot the ball from the three-point line and also get to the foul line. You like guys who can get to the foul line and shoot a good percentage, and he has the potential to be an 85-90 percent free-throw shooter.

This is the start of my ninth year at UALR, and it is the first time that we have had a schedule where we haven’t played a non-Division I school. As I’ve been told numerous times by longtime UALR basketball supporters, this very well could be the best schedule in the history of this program. We have 11 non-conference games that will really challenge our basketball team in preparation for Sun Belt Conference play.

This is not a schedule I would have put together a year ago when we had eight new guys on our roster who hadn’t played a minute for us. In contrast to last year’s team, this season we have nine guys back who saw playing time last season.

There isn’t a single game on our schedule that you can look at and feel like you can pencil in a win, and there are some definite marquee names, the most obvious of which is Memphis, which is coming off a Final Four appearance and a national runner-up finish. We’ve also got a game against a Creighton program which has made 11-straight postseason appearances, and we’re starting a home-and-home series with Oral Roberts, which has won 20-or-more games each of the last four seasons and made three-straight NCAA Tournament appearances.

I’m really excited about the schedule we’re playing this season and how it will challenge us night in and night out. We’re playing an exhibition game in Hot Springs, Ark. on Nov. 9, then open the regular season with two games out in California. That’s all for now. Make sure to follow all the latest Trojan basketball news at www.ualrtrojans.com.