Men have helping hand in women’s basketball
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
At practice last Friday, the Pitt women’s basketball team was busy preparing for its upcoming game at Fordham. When a player made a nice defensive play or scored a basket, her coaches and teammates cheered her on. When she messed up, her coaches let herknow that, too.
Acrossthe court, the team’s practice squad, made up entirely of male Pitt students, was less demonstrative. No one applauded or showboated when the men, wearing dark gray pinnies, scored during their scrimmage against the women. The guys might quietly cheer “C’mon, Black!” or give each other high fives, but really, this wasn’t about them. Itnever is.
“Coming in, they don’t care who scores the most points on our team,” said senior David Gibb, now in his third season on the practice squad. “They just want us to help them improve, so I think putting the girls’ team first instead of ourselvesis very important.”
Like most Division I women’s basketball programs, Pitt has its own allmale practice squad, whose members attend practice, do drillsand help the women prepare for upcoming opponents. Locally, Robert Morris and Duquesne’s women’s teams alsopractice with guys.
For the women, practicing against generally bigger and more aggressive, faster players pays dividends on game days. For the men, who don’t receive scholarships, the opportunity to shoot basketball with a Division I program at Petersen Events Center has itsown quiet glory.
“I think the main thing about them is that they are men, so they are faster, stronger, they’re going to post harder,” junior center Kalista Walterssaid. “So I think it prepares us. Just like practice is supposed to be harder than games, I think if you can play against them, then any girls’ teamis going to be easier.”
The nine guys on Pitt’s practice squad look at some film before practice to learn about upcoming opponents, even taking on the roles of individual athletes. One 6-foot-3 player might be a 3-point shooter while playing around at Trees Hall; against the women, though, he makes moresense posting up.
“They’ll be our opponent’s offense, they’ll run a defensive scheme that we need to get better at, they’ll be in shooting drills, they’ll be passers, they’ll just defend the post when we’re working on post work,” said associate head coach Kathy McConnellMiller. “So, anything that we feel we need, whether it’s size, strength,or a little bit quicker, a little bit of athleticism, we willutilize the guys.”
McConnell-Miller said practice players need a good basketball brain in order to shift between different team’s styles at each practice. On Nov. 28, they simulated Wisconsin’s offense, which was followed by Fordham three days later, squad member KobePhillippi said.
“They’ve got to learn a lot in a very quick amount of time, so they have to have high basketball IQ,” McConnell-Miller said. “They’ve got to have a good skillset, and they really have to have a mentality that there are times when the girls will have some success against them, and they have to be humble enoughto handle that.”
The drills aren’t always glorious, but that’s not the point: The practice athletes have pridein what they do, but they can’thave an ego.
“It’s not necessarily about coming in and getting buckets,” Walters said. “It’s about pushing us individually. It’s not like pickup. It’s just running [the] floor hard and setting screens and doing the technical things that the other teamswould do.”
The practice of using men’s squads goes back decades, although it’s unclear who started the practice, so to speak. Legendary Tennessee Lady Vols coach Pat Summitt was using male practice squads back in the 1970s. As of 2007, two-thirds of Division I women’s programs had them, according to an NCAA survey reportedby Bloomberg.
Among the benefits of joining the squad are getting practice gear and shoes, being involved with the Pitt program and learning the game from head coach Suzie McConnellSerio’sstaff.
“It’s definitely a learning experience,” said Phillippi, a Keystone Oaks graduate. “I’m from Pittsburgh, and McConnell’s name is the biggest basketball name you can think of, so learning from them is just like an incredible experience.”
While the guys might have had successful high school careers, you don’t see too many 7-footers on the practice squad. Former Shaler guard Dan Taylor eschewed the idea of playing basketball at a Division III school to attend Richmond, and as a sophomore, he organized a subset of the club basketball team to play againstthe women.
“On a good day, I weigh 160 pounds, so I definitely never had the size or quickness to play Division I,” said Taylor, who is 5 feet 10. “That was the case for probably 95 percent of the guys who would play againstthe girls.”
ForTaylor, the most important qualities of a practice player are “being coachable and also doing it without openingyour mouth.”
Because of that, at practice he didn’t talk too much to any of the female athletes, including Richmond basketball and soccer player Becca Wann. It wasn’t until they both were refereeing intramural basketballtheir senior year that they started to get to know each other.
“Long story short,” he said, “we’renow married.”
McConnell-Miller said two of her former athletes at Tulsa and Colorado also married players on the practice squad. But given the nature of the practice squad, that’s not an outcome most bank on.
“She’s the ultimate competitor,” Taylor said of his wife, “so crushing on practice players would’ve never crossed hermind.”
Crushing practice players, not so much. Crushing them?That would be just fine.