Men's Basketball 10/3/2014 11:46:00 AM by Paul Meyer

Meyer On Morris: The Annual Fall Pilgrimage

Moon Township, Pa. – Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m. will be a remarkable time for Elijah Minnie, Ryan Skovranko, Marcquise Reed, Jafar Kinsey and Andre Frederick.

Sunday at 10:00 a.m. marks the start of the first official practice for the 2014-15 Robert Morris basketball team, and those five make up RMU's freshman class.

Thus, the Sunday 10:00 a.m. "tip" officially begins their first Division I basketball practice.

It will be …

"Brutal," said senior David Appolon, recalling his first practice in 2011. "One of the longest days in your life. Brutal, man."

"The first day of practice is very hard," said senior Lucky Jones, who also came to Robert Morris as a freshman that fall.

Will it be a shock for Minnie, Skovranko, Reed, Kinsey and Frederick?

"Yes," said coach Andrew Toole, embarking on his fifth season as the Robert Morris head coach. "Obviously, a lot of it depends on what your high school program was like, but even if you went to a very good high school program I still think there's a shock in terms of the physicality and in terms of the intensity.

"You go from being a big man in a program and the strongest, most athletic guy in the gym and now you flip that over and you're playing against a junior or a senior in college and you're playing against a man. Some of those things you took for granted -- maybe getting open on the wing or grabbing a rebound in traffic -- become a little bit different. I think there is a little bit of a shock to the system at times. Maybe for some guys who haven't been through environments where they've been made uncomfortable on the high school level it's even more of a shock once they get to college."

Appolon can attest to that.

"I came in like it was a high school practice. It was a rude awakening, to be honest," Appolon said. "I'm not going to lie, I was second-guessing myself. 'Do I really want to play this game or not?' It was a lot of running and stuff I wasn't used to back in high school."

Jones, who prepped at famed St. Anthony High School in New Jersey under legendary Bob Hurley Sr., found the transition to Division I basketball a bit smoother.

"One thing I knew was that I was prepared for anything," Jones said. "Any kind of challenge or anything that was thrown at me my freshman year was like 'OK. I'm going to do this.' We had upperclassmen and even people in my class (who) were like 'How is he doing this?' Because my (high school) coach trained me for it. He made it possible for me to come to college and be able to play right away."

So perhaps Jones actually welcomed his first day of practice.

"I was like, 'Wow!'" Jones recalled.

He looked around the court and saw upperclassmen Velton Jones, Russell Johnson, Lijah Thompson, Coron Williams, Anthony Myers-Pate and Lawrence Bridges.

And he thought …

"For the next four years, I'm going to be competing against people like this every day," Jones said. "You just have to come prepared with your mind and your body and get ready to work and not take anything for granted. The first day of practice is exciting because you don't know what to expect. It's going to be a great experience (for the new freshmen) because they've never had the competition level raised so high, and the yelling and the screaming and the battling is going to be so fun."

Jones, however, did have some downs with his ups during his freshman preseason basketball practices.

Toole kicked him out of one practice for some transgression or another.

"It was a wakeup call," Jones said. "I wasn't mad, but I was a little upset because I didn't understand why or what I did wrong. But it as a humbling experience. (Toole) took me into his office and he spoke to me. We let out all our differences. I learned from that opportunity, and I just took off from there because I knew I wanted to play on this court and I knew we were going to do some remarkable things here."

Which, of course, Jones has. We'll cover all that in the coming weeks. One reason he has? That day Toole kicked him out of practice.

"It kind of woke him up," Appolon said. "He did a better job than I did about taking advice from the older guys. Freshman year, you just have to learn from the older guys. My thing was, I didn't listen my freshman year. Basically, you just have to listen. I didn't listen. That was my problem. I was just trying to go my own way like in high school, thinking I was a man coming in. Once I adjusted to it, it started getting better."

Now, three years later, Jones and Appolon are the older guys for the new guys. They're the "been there, done that" guys.

Never hurts to have people like that around.

"They can definitely be resources," Toole said. "As much as everyone on our staff played at some point in time we're not going through practice the way players are going through practice. Guys who have faced the adversity we're talking about and who have come through it and had success on the court -- your upperclassmen, your returning guys -- they're such a resource because they can go over to somebody and say, 'I was exactly where you are two years ago or three years ago. Trust that what you're doing is going to help you be successful in the games.'

"They also can show guys how to do things the right way in terms of detail, technique and communication. Guys can not only listen to them, but they can also look to them as we're going through a practice about how to do things the right way that will be productive for our team. We talk to our upperclassman a lot about how they can help."

That should help Minnie and Skovranko and Reed and Kinsey and Frederick.

"As much as they don't know they at least can kind of follow directions and maybe feel a little bit better because someone is reaching out to them and helping them through times when they're unsure about what's going on," Toole said.

"I think I've already been doing a good job as far as taking care of the freshmen," Appolon said. "Telling them how to make it through runs, telling them it's not hard because in your mind you know what you have to do as far as doing whatever the coach wants you to do. They have to come prepared and ready to work."

"We had a couple (moments) this summer where we had some young guys who were struggling to get through workouts and Dave just went over to them and you could tell he had a little bit of a smirk on his face because he felt their pain," Toole said. "He'd been exactly where they were, and he's trying to motivate them to get through the workout and encourage them to finish.

"I think that's some of the fun part for us as coaches to see guys develop and mature. Now it's like second nature for them to make a time in a run or to push their body in a difficult fast break drill. Now the young guys are going through it and everyone's trying to lend a hand to help them through."

However, summer games, conditioning sessions and even the pre-practice individual drills aren't like the regular practices that begin Sunday. Possibly the individual drills do begin giving the new guys some idea of what's to come.

"We hope it does," Toole said a few weeks ago. "In the time we have allotted right now and the numbers we have allotted, you can't really simulate what practice will be like. Obviously we hope the topics we're trying to cover or the pace of the workouts simulate practice. But everything's on a small scale. It's broken down to such a small scale in the individuals that sometimes it's hard to see the total picture."

The first practice will be difficult enough, although there's a newness to it that removes some of the edge.

"They're excited and eager to get on the floor," Toole said. "It's the start of the season, so the first one we try to get in as much high-energy drills as we can and stir up competition to try and set the tone for what we want to do for the practices going forward."

The tedium begins soon after.

"I'd say the 'grind practices' come the third or fourth practice when they're a little bit fatigued and, as crazy as it sounds, the newness wears off after a couple days," Toole said. "Maybe you try and challenge them a little bit with some more difficult drills or you try to change the format of practice and see how they respond."

Watching that response can be, at the very least, interesting.

"I think in everything when you first get to college there's that moment," Toole said. "Whether it's in the weight room your first week and you get up in the morning and you can't move. Whether it's your first couple of individual workouts where you want to go lay on the ground. We've had guys do that before. Then you get into practice and you're going to be tested even more. It's that next step in the process of becoming a Division I player -- the weight room, individual workouts, conditioning, then practice, then the games. In each step, I think there's always that moment where a player thinks 'How did that just happen?' or 'What just happened?' or 'What am I doing?' We've seen all those kinds of emotions occur in our time here."

It's obvious when it happens.

"Oh, 100 percent," Toole said. "It will manifest itself in a couple ways. A guy being in a drill and really having no idea what's going on in the drill and trying to survive, looking completely like a fish out of water. Probably one of the biggest places you see it is fatigue. When a guy starts to fatigue halfway through a practice or three-quarters of the way through a practice, and you see how they respond. As coaches, something you want is to get your team in some of those situations because you want to see how they're going to respond.

"We've had young guys who all of a sudden in the middle of a drill walk out of the drill. They just can't do it anymore. They can't fight their way out. They can't get that defensive stop that they need to give themselves a break that they are trying to earn. Some of that is how we set up and manage practice so they get put in some of those situations and they have to figure out a way to respond."

There will be some weird moments in all that.

"It's incredible how time can (impact) all this stuff," Toole said. "We have a minute run, and that minute might seem like it's 25 minutes. Or you get a minute rest after that minute run and that minute you're resting seems like it's four seconds. Time plays tricks on you when you're unsure of what's going on and your brain's moving 100 miles an hour and you're trying to get your body to compete and do the things it needs to do.

"When you're in the middle of a grind or a difficult situation, it's really hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel or see down the road. You're just trying to survive. We try to remind them all the time how quickly this goes by so no matter how crazy it is or how tired you are or how difficult you might think it is, it's going to be over before you know it. We try to remind them of that so they take advantage of the workouts and the practices and the days they have to be a college athlete. I think it gets through to some of the guys, but it really gets through as you get older."

Appolon and Jones have talked to the freshmen about practice, and they've talked to themselves.

"I think (the freshmen) are ready as far as the advice we've giving them," Appolon said. "Lucky and Chuck (Oliver) and I have also sat down and said 'We have to focus. This is our last year. We need everybody to come together so we can have good preparation going into the season and don't have to start out lacking in the beginning of the season.' Practice is going to dictate who's going to play, who's ready to play. We're going to try to make some noise."

Again.

The Colonials have enjoyed seven consecutive seasons of spectacular success. In that span, they were 163-81 overall, including a phenomenal 99-25 in regular-season Northeast Conference games.

Jones knows what it will take to sustain that level of success, and he knows it begins on the first day of practice. That means the freshmen had better be ready.

"It's hard, but I've been trying to help them out," Jones said. "You let them know to not say anything back. Just listen. Observe the message. Go out there and play your game. Have fun. If you're not having fun playing this game, then it becomes 'Why am I doing this? What is wrong with me?' It's going to be hard. You're not going to ever experience anything like it. It's their first time in college. It's not high school. It's college. You just have to grow up and put your big-boy pants on."

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