Meyer On Morris: You're Never Really Sure

By: By Paul Meyer

Men's Basketball | 10/7/2014 10:55:00 AM

Moon Township, Pa. – Now comes the tough part.

Or so Andrew Toole hopes.

His Colonials are into their first real week of practice. Summer is over. The pre-practice conditioning workouts and individual drills are done. Now it's for real.

Toole is eager to see how tough the 2014-15 Colonials are. Or will be. Toughness is something that's likely to be a recurring theme this season, especially if Toole doesn't like what he sees or senses.

What exactly concerns him in this regard?

"The competitive nature of our team," he said. "We've done a lot of one-on-one games in our individual workouts or we play our two-on-two and you go from one team winning the first game, 7-1, and then the second game the score gets flipped and it's 7-1 the other way. To me, that's not competitive. There's not a lot of toughness involved in that because how do you lose 7-1 and then come back and win 7-1? Both sides of that ball I question. You just won 7-1. Why can't you win again?

"That toughness is just the consistency of competition, the thought process to make some of those extra winning plays, being fearless when it comes to doing what the game asks you to do. If the game asks you to box out a 6'8" guy and get a rebound, you have to go and do that. You can't have any pause about that responsibility. If the game asks you to dive on the floor, you have to dive on the floor. You can't have any hesitation about getting on the floor first. Those are some of the toughness things that concern me."

Perhaps Toole is looking for another Tony Lee. Or Bateko Francisco. Or Velton Jones.

Lee was among the toughest to ever play for the Colonials. He brooked no nonsense. He rebounded at a much higher level than his 6'0" frame would suggest and was named the 2008 Northeast Conference Player of the Year.

Francisco was tabbed as the 2009 NEC Defensive Player of the Year.

Jones? Helping out with this year's squad, he was an All-NEC First Team selection in 2012 and 2013.

Maybe some kind of video montage combining clips of all three players would be enlightening to the current Colonials.

"We've thought about that," Toole said.

Toole, entering his fifth season as the RMU head coach and eighth season overall with the program, wants to be sure his players understand toughness doesn't begin and end on game days.

"The consistency of how you can come to practice and try and win drills, that's competition. That's toughness," he said. "The guys who have been the most successful in our program and some of our more successful teams have had that kind of competition and that toughness. As you go through this, inevitably you're going to be sore one day, you're going to get tired, you're not going to feel like it, you're not going to want to hear the coaches.

"Yet if you have that consistent competition, if you have that toughness inside of you that can be brought out through competition, you might not win one drill, but then -- boom! -- all of a sudden your focus is back. Those juices start to flow, and that carries you through the rest of your practice. That carries you through whatever the next drill is. That pushes you through fatigue. Competing is not wanting to lose a sprint to the guy next to me, not wanting to have sloppy footwork like the guy in front of me or the guy behind me. It's wanting to win the shooting drill because we're keeping score. All those kinds of things are things I get concerned about with this group."

Along with the desire to see that toughness in this team as practices move along, Toole also thinks about the rebirth of the winning tradition at Robert Morris that's been established over the past seven seasons. In that span, the Colonials were 163-81, tied with Akron of the Mid-American Conference (MAC) to rank seventh among mid-major programs.

There's pressure to sustain that success.

"You feel it every day," Toole said. "One of the things that our team doesn't always understand, especially some of these new guys, is the competition level and the pride that you have as coaches and wanting your program to continue to be successful. We're upholding the tradition of what's gone on here for seven years. I don't want to be the one who is responsible for having that slide or having that dip. I don't want these guys to be the ones responsible for it.

"They don't always think that way because they think we're here. We're just going to win because that's what (happens). That's the mindset of a lot of new players. That's part of our job."

Each season, Toole and his assistants must get the players to understand that winning doesn't just happen. Simply because the Colonials won last season doesn't ensure they'll win again this season.

"I think sometimes you get a little bit of culture shock," Toole said. "Kids sometimes want to come here because of that winning, and then when they find out what it actually takes to win that's when you realize who has that toughness and that love of competition."

There are other issues for Toole, his staff and players to figure out in the series of practices that lead to the season opener Friday, Nov. 14, against Lafayette at the Charles L. Sewall Center.

Such as a starting lineup, sophomore point guard Kavon Stewart's readiness to run a team for which he hasn't yet made a start and what defense the Colonials will use this season.

Perhaps Toole knows a thing or three about all of that. Or at least has a sense about it all.

"Sense is probably a better word because you really don't know anything," he said. "Each step we take with all of our new guys, and even with our returning guys, each year is building a team again. You go through your summer workouts and then preseason starts and it's kind of that next step. It's more difficult. Some of the guys when they get their class schedule and the grind of the daily basis begins don't respond as well as they did in the summer when the load was a little bit lighter.

"Now we're going into phase three, which is full practice. Their body is going to be fatigued. Who's going to respond well? You have some inclinations from things you've already done, but you're never really sure until they get into that full practice setting. There are some guys who have been surprises in the past who we battled with through preseason and then all of a sudden practice comes and to them that's the start of the season. You're never really fully sure until they get into it."

At this early stage, Lucky Jones, Stephan Bennett (the junior formerly known as Stephan Hawkins) and Stewart almost certainly rank as starters.

"There are probably two spots where it will be interesting," Toole said. "We're going to probably have to play some different lineups and get into practice and see how guys work together and communicate."

It's possible highly touted freshman big Elijah Minnie will become a starter. The 6'8" Minnie helped Lincoln Park win both WPIAL and PIAA Class A championships last season by averaging 15.7 points and 12.3 rebounds per game.

On the other hand, junior Aaron Tate has starting experience at the collegiate level.

"Aaron is very knowledgeable and tries to do everything we ask him to do," Toole said. "He has more experience than Elijah. I think that will be a battle."

There's also the off-guard position.

"Pick a name out of the hat," Toole said.

Appolon could be a factor there. So could Oliver. Let's not forget freshmen Marcquise Reed and Jafar Kinsey. Reed and Kinsey also should play some point guard in relief of Stewart.

"I think you're going to see that," Toole said. "They have the ability to play off the ball as well, so I think you're going to see that at times. You might have a lineup at certain times with all three of them out there."

Entering the season, Stewart ranks as the heir-apparent to Anthony Myers-Pate at the point. The lightning-quick Stewart last season played in 30 games and averaged 4.9 points, 2.8 assists and 1.1 steals per game.

"We have great faith in Kavon's ability and the improvements he's made from a year ago," Toole said. "How much he's grown. How much he's matured. His consistency level. However, like I said earlier, now we're getting into a more difficult phase of being consistent, bringing energy and communicating where it's going to be even more of a daily basis. In the summer, it was two or three times a week. In the preseason, it's three times a week, maybe four. Now, it's five. As we get to games, it could be six. So now each step we take, he has to prove that he's capable of handling what comes with it. So far, signs are pointing in a good direction, but we always have to remain vigilant."

Finally, there's the defense.

"We're leaning in a certain direction," Toole said. "I'm not going to say necessarily what that is, but we've evaluated some of our team workouts. We've watched some film as a staff and tried to make the decision that's going to be best for our personnel. We'll see."

You'll recall that last season the Colonials were so inept playing their traditional man-to-man defense early in the season that Toole switched to a zone after nine games and stuck with that the rest of the season.

It proved successful.

In their first nine games, the Colonials were 3-6 and yielded 80.2 points per game. Thereafter, they were 19-8 and allowed 69 points a game. The zone proved especially effective in RMU's first 18 games against NEC opposition, including the first two games of NEC Tournament. Robert Morris was 16-2 and yielded only 64.1 points per game.

One could argue that part of the reason for the RMU's success with the zone was tied to their games against NEC foes. League games tend to be lower scoring than non-conference games.

"Agreed," Toole said. "But I think even as we watched some of those early games, out of frustration we would play a couple of possessions of zone against Youngstown State. We would play a couple of possessions against Cleveland State zone. Ss we watched those things, we said, 'If we could have stayed in zone we might have been more effective defensively than going back to our man.' We've looked at a lot of the numbers, and those were some of the things from an out-of-conference perspective (where) maybe we could have utilized (the zone) better."

Robert Morris played zone for the first time against Toledo, Dec. 7. The Rockets won, 80-77, but Toole and his staff were encouraged.

"Obviously (the Rockets) weren't prepared for us (playing a zone)," Toole said, "but they were scoring 95 (points a game). If we had played man, they would have scored 105. That's the way we looked at it."

In their next five non-conference games, the Colonials held three opponents to 64 points or less. They did yield 92 points in a game at nationally-ranked Oklahoma State, but that was a bit understandable.

"The only non-conference game where we played zone and were not good defensively was Oakland, where they shredded us in the first half," Toole said.

That tussle at Oakland, Dec. 22, was a bear of a game for the Colonials. The Golden Grizzlies shot 57 percent from the field, including 46 percent from beyond the arc.

"That was more of an effort level from our guys," Toole said. "We weren't playing any rules of the zone properly or doing it with any type of intensity because everyone wanted to go on Christmas break, so that game was kind of the outlier. I do feel even in our non-conference games where we played a zone it made us more competitive defensively."

It would seem, then, that Toole and his staff are leaning toward playing a zone again this season. However, at this stage of practice it's difficult to make a prediction because, of course, you're never really sure.

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