New coach plans to have Aggies on the run this season
Editor’s note: This is the third in an 11-part series previewing UNM men’s basketball opponents for the coming season. The series is running in reverse of the preseason Mountain West media poll and concludes with a nonconference schedule preview.
Craig Smith had nothing but nice things to say earlier this month in Las Vegas, Nev., about his predecessors at Utah State.
How could he not? Stew Morrill, who spent 17 seasons as head coach of the program (1998-2015) and Tim Duryea, Morrill’s longtime assistant who was head coach from 2015 until last spring, gave as much to the program as anyone and were a part of years of sustained success in both the Big West and Western Athletic Conference prior to joining the Mountain West in 2013.
But Smith, who was hired after Duryea was fired, bringing an end to the Morrill era, also knows why he’s in Logan, Utah, now.
“They hired us for a reason,” said Smith, whose team was picked to finish ninth in the 11-team league in a preseason media poll. “I know our way. Our way has been successful at every stop of the way. So, certainly as a coach, we take a lot of pride in having our general brand of basketball, which is up-tempo. We want to score.
“Last year (at South Dakota), we scored 80.9 points per game which was (36th out 351 Division I teams) in the country. Conveying that to our players has been really good. But, certainly, it’s different.”
While all new coaches boast of playing faster, the book on Smith says it’s so. The 45-year-old coach, who worked at four schools under Nebraska coach Tim Miles, coached South Dakota the past four seasons to 79 wins (26 last season) and postseason play each of the past two seasons out of the Summit League, where an uptempo style was never a problem for the Coyotes.
Last season’s 70.9 possessions per game at USD ranked 52 in the nation. They ranked 56th and 61st the prior two seasons. At Utah State, meanwhile, the Aggies ranked 244th in tempo last season under Duryea and in the entire Stew Morrill era ranked in the top 250 in tempo in the country only once, the legendary coach’s final season on the job in 2015.
That, Smith says, is because his teams run — not plays, they just run.
Under Morrill and Duryea, the Aggies had hundreds of variations of set plays on offense to learn and run that generally slow down the tempo of a game down.
“First of all, they did have 600 set plays,” Smith said. “Our teams at South Dakota were so bad at 5 on 0, reppin’ out plays (practicing offense without a defense going against them). And these guys (the Utah State returning players), they’re unbelievable at it. You can tell they’ve been well trained.”
But any system, be it one based on free-flowing, up-tempo running or one predicated on methodical set plays, is only as good as the players in it.
To that end, Smith and the Aggies start behind the eight ball having lost star guard Koby McEwen, who transferred to Marquette, and three forwards started practice three weeks ago on the shelf with injuries, including Klay Stall (out for season with torn ACL), Dwayne Brown, Jr. (broken hand) and Roche Grootfaam (undisclosed).
But USU has a solid returning starter in the post in 6-foot8 Quinn Taylor, and Brown was also a force at times. But the offense will likely go as far as sharpshooter Sam Merrill can take it. Merrill, like UNM’s Anthony Mathis, hit 98 3-pointers last season and did so at an impressive 46.4 percent clip. He also averaged 16.3 points per game, and that inched up to 17.2 in league games. In three games against the Lobos, that was 22.7 points per game.
Merrill clearly benefited from both McEwen being his teammate and from Duryea’s set plays on offense. But he said he’s not worried at all about the new system being one he can flourish in.
“I think he’s got a pretty good understanding of how to put guys in the right positions and how to help them to be successful,” Merrill said of Smith’s offense.