New Cardinal coach hopes to end injury jinx
One of Jerod Haase’s jobs as the new Stanford head basketball coach sounds a lot simpler than it is: keeping his team healthy.
During Johnny Dawkins’ eight-year run before Haase, the Cardinal seemed to injure every body part listed in “Gray’s Anatomy.” There were compound fractures, stress fractures, contusions, dislocations, separations, you name it.
The injuries weren’t the only reason Stanford went to the NCAA Tournament just once in the Dawkins years, but they were part of the problem. Players’ parents occasionally weighed in that the team was over-trained, but other teams seem to work equally hard without the same high injury toll.
“In college basketball, to a certain degree, injuries are going to be part of what you do,” Haase said Friday at Pac-12 media day. “I like to lean back on my experiences as a player, understanding what it feels like after a long practice, how important being fresh is. You balance that with the things you’ve learned as a coach, under Roy Williams (at Kansas) and as a head coach.
“We feel like we have a pretty good system in place with our strength and conditioning coach and our trainer. While you can’t guarantee anything, we have a system that has worked for the last four years at UAB.”
Junior forward Reid Travis is a good example of the cost of injuries to the Stanford program. The team’s best rebounder missed nine games as a freshman because of a broken femur and the final 22 games of last season with a stress fracture of his tibia.
“I don’t know why we had to go through so many injuries,” Travis said. “I couldn’t tell you. I feel like if I did, I wouldn’t have gotten hurt two years in a row.”
Haase has all of last year’s team back with the exception of leading scorer Rosco Allen, a 6-9 forward who graduated with a year of eligibility left. He is playing for Obradoiro in Spain’s Liga Endesa.
Four other players return who averaged in double figures: Travis (12.8 points per game), Dorian Pickens (12.3), Marcus Allen (11.1) and Michael Humphrey (10.3). But in the loaded Pac-12, the Cardinal were picked just 10th in the preseason media poll.
“It’s something that’s interesting for everybody to talk about,” Haase said. “But it just doesn’t mean a whole lot.”
The 6-9 Humphrey has put on 20 to 25 pounds since last year, Haase said. “Every time that he and Reid hit at practice, there is a large collision, and you an almost feel it across the gym.”
Said Travis, “We’re trying to take each other’s heads off. We compete hard. At the end of the day, it’s a slap on the back at the end of practice. Then we do the same thing the next day.”
Point guard Robert Cartwright has made a huge recovery from his gruesome compound forearm fracture. “I think it’s a miracle to go from going through all those surgeries less than a year ago to running the show in practice,” Travis said. “It blows my mind.”
Travis’ main weakness has been his woeful foul shooting, just 47 percent over his first two seasons. He has greatly altered his stroke with the help of assistant coach Jeff Wulbrun. He’s putting more air in his shot and delivering it more from the right side.
“This summer it finally started to click,” Travis said. “It’s second nature now.”