PonyFans.com practice report (3/30/14)

[PonyPride]

The Mustangs held their final practice of the season in Moody Coliseum Sunday morning, before flying out at noon for New York City, where they will face Clemson Tuesday night in the NIT semifinals at Madison Square Garden. Some observations:

• Larry Brown sounds like he’s running the first practice of the season, stopping every play to point out the slightest details on defense … of shots … of passes … Players not hanging heads — they have heard this before.

• A lot of coaches “taper” practices at the end of the season, but watching today, you wouldn’t know Tuesday’s game will be the Mustangs’ 36th of the season. The Ponies are running up and down the floor as if they’re trying to make up a 10-point deficit in the last couple of minutes of a game.

• Sweat happens: guards Crandall Head and Sterling Brown usually practice with long-sleeve t-shirts under their workout jerseys.

• When he arrived on campus, freshman guard was the biggest of high school stars. The coaches will get after him a lot, because they expect a lot of him. But nobody is more critical than Frazier is of himself … which probably has a lot to do with his improvement.

• There’s a lot to like about Nic Moore’s game, not the least of which is his fearlessness, his ability to venture into the paint among the big guys and get his shot off. Moore just split Markus Kennedy and Cannen Cunningham in the low post … and scored on a floating jumper.

• Larry Brown talks frequently about how much he’ll miss graduating seniors Nick Russell and Shawn Williams. Of Williams, Brown said again Sunday morning that Williams is an extremely smart player who “always does the right thing and is always in the right spot to do the little things that don’t show up on a stat sheet.” In five-on-five drills, Williams just split three players to tip an offensive rebound back out to a teammate … and started smiling and talking to (at) his teammates like he had just hit a 40-foot game-winning three-pointer.

• From the first day of the season until now, practices are competitive … always. When the Mustangs run game-situation drills in practice, they are spirited, the coaches are talking and coaching constantly, and the players get angry at themselves and each other when a mistake is made. Why? The carrot that has been dangled all season long is that the “losing” team in live situations runs a few sprints afterward. Every team in the country is in great shape at this time of the year, but after 35 games, the Ponies still run sprints — not a lot (just a few across the court), but enough that the players have no interest in putting extra miles on their tires, so they run each drill like it’s the closing minutes of a game.

• So much is made of the Mustangs' improved defense and overall talent … and rightly so. But watching the team's passing, especially in the paint, is incredible. When the team runs half-court five-on-five game-situation drills, there are 10 players weaving through a maze of congestion in the paint, and they repeatedly thread passes through gaps that simply don't appear to be there. Almost every time Markus Kennedy gets what appears to be an easy lay-in, it's the result of a teammate seeing a pass that previous teams just didn't see. It's a subtle detail that doesn't appear in stat sheets, but the coaches teach the details of passing constantly.

[SMU 86]

" stopping every play to point out the slightest details"

Nothing new there.

[ojaipony]

Demand excellence and you get championship results. Love all of this. Hopefully they get plenty of rest though between then and Tuesday night. I would assume that they would spend a lot of time on the MSG floor today. Wish we had an extra day to acclimate to it, but I'm assuming all teams are given the same amount of time/access.