SDSU: PLAYER-DRIVEN TEAM
Ending the season with a loss by a point in the Mountain West championship game and in overtime in the NCAA Tournament (after leading by nine with 2:30 to go) can have motivational benefits.
It did with San Diego State’s basketball team.
“I think immediately when we came to our first practice in the summer, we took more initiative to be more vocal this year,” senior guard Matt Bradley said Thursday, speaking via Zoom on the second of two Mountain West media days. “It allowed the coaches to kind of take a step back and allowed the players to come together as one, to have more vocal authority.”
Music to Brian Dutcher’s ears.
“There are two types of teams,” the SDSU head coach said. “There are coach-driven teams and player-driven teams. Playerdriven teams are always better, and we have a playerdriven team. … We have guys who have played a lot of basketball and know what it is. There’s nothing they haven’t seen or won’t be ready for.”
Lamont Butler, notably, has become a vocal presence. But it’s more of a collective leadership among veterans all in their fourth, fifth, even sixth year of college basketball: Butler, Bradley, Keshad Johnson, Nathan Mensah, Aguek Arop, Adam Seiko.
“This year we’re really a player-led team,” Bradley said. “The motivation, everybody’s grit, everybody’s hunger comes from the players. It starts with us. Last year, it was fueled by the coaches mainly. It wasn’t a problem, but if we couldn’t find it, the coaches had to put in a lot of effort (to get it). It’s kind of effortless this year.”
An hour later, Colorado State coach Niko Medved was discussing the same topic.
“It’s the buzzword, but you rely on the culture that you have,” Medved said. “On bad teams, no one leads. On average teams, the coaches lead. On really good to great teams, the players lead.”
More notes and quotes from 5½ hours of Zooms with the conference’s players and coaches:
Absolute love
Fresno State senior guard
Jordan Campbell initially signed a letter of intent with SDSU in 2017, then asked for his release after Aztecs assistant coach Justin Hutson, his primary recruiter, was hired by Fresno State. Campbell landed at Oregon State, then left after a semester and transferred to the Bulldogs.
Asked what it’s like to play against SDSU, he said: “They’ve shown nothing but absolute love — not just from the staff but also from the people and community. Whenever I go back there, there’s nothing but love. I know a lot of people would assume that it would be hate or envy, but it’s been nothing but love from both sides.”
Broken expectations
Preseason all-conference guard Isaiah Stevens of Colorado State broke his foot last week and underwent surgery. How long will he be out?
“The only thing I’d say is, it’s not going to be a two- or three-week deal here,” said Medved, who also lost Mountain West player of the year David Roddy to the NBA and two other starters to the transfer portal. “I mean, Isaiah is going to be out for a while. I feel good about the plan that we have and what he’s going to try to
do, but this isn’t going to be something where he’s going to be back quickly.
“He had surgery and it’s a foot, and feet can be tricky. The one thing is, we are not trying to rush him back at all. This is about what’s best for him, and he’ll be ready when he’s ready. … We definitely hope we’ll have him back at some point this season, but that’s not something that’s going to happen here quickly. That’s something we understand as a program. That’s the way everybody else should look at it, too.”
Court changes
San Jose State and Boise State have new floors. The former features a new logo at center court that is modeled after a computer chip in an ode to Silicon Valley and (yes) glows in the dark. The latter is minimalist, with lighter wood and a Broncos logo at midcourt but no colors inside the key or 3-point line.
Coach Leon Rice explained: “My feeling on the court was simpler was better. So many of these schools all over the country are putting the city landscape, a map of the world, they identify all the European countries on the f loor … what? It’s all over the place. There’s too much. I just like the clean basketball f loor. I’m a bit of a purist that way.”
Across the parking lot from ExtraMile Arena is their football stadium with blue turf. Why not a blue court?
“When I did first get here, (the athletic director) and I talked about it,” Rice said. “We even mocked it up, what a blue floor would look like. I just looked at it, like, ‘Eww, I don’t think we need that gimmick now. We want to build a program.’ ”
A bad year
Nevada was picked ninth in the Mountain West’s preseason media poll released Wednesday, believed to be the lowest for a Steve Alford
team in 30-plus years as a head coach. That’s one spot below where they finished last season after going 13-18 (6-12 in conference), only Alford’s third losing season. Then their three top players — Grant Sherfield, Desmond Cambridge Jr.
and Mission Hills High alum Warren Washington — transferred.
“Are our fans frustrated? I hope so,” Alford said when asked if he’s feeling the heat. “I’ve spoken several times throughout the summer to our fans that mediocrity and the year that we had is not something we should expect or want.
“(But) we put enough of those pressures on our team and our coaching staff that I don’t need to go to a fan opinion to know we had a bad year. I live in my home and I tell myself, ‘That’s a bad year, it’s unacceptable.’ That’s not who I am as a competitor. That’s not what I want my players doing. I’m not so concerned about where we’re picked as much as where we finished last year. Last year was a bad year on a lot of fronts.”
Alford enters the fourth season of a 10-year, $11.6 million contract that included a $250,000 retention bonus last April. Three weeks later, Athletic Director Doug Knuth was fired and replaced by Stephanie Rempe
from LSU.
“I think things are moving in a really positive direction,” Alford said of the new administration, “and now it’s our job as a basketball program to take that step forward. Because we took a step back.”