Hamline Practice 10-16-13

Made my way over to venerable Hutton Arena on the Hamline campus tonight to take in one of Head Coach Kerri Stockwell's early season practices. I got over there right around 5:40 and went to Stockwell's office where I was greeted by her and her staff consisting of assistant Dean Stambaugh and new assistants Naomi Stohlmann and Willie Taylor; fresh from his longstanding job as Head Coach at St. Paul Central. Stockwell indicated that tonight's session would be based more on evaluation than anything else as they're not in true "practice" mode just yet. Nevertheless, I was anxious to get a look at this year's squad; particularly the thirteen new freshman that have come on board this year. To get tonight's session going, Stockwell has the team go through a wide variety of light running and stretching exercises to get loosened up. With the team fully ready to go, Stockwell has the team perform a passing drill that utilizes the full court. Players pair up and down the court pass the ball without dribbling. The drill is then modified to incorporate a bounce pass and then modified again as she has the players catch the ball with onehand and then pass the ball back to the teammate with one hand as well. Challenging to say the least! Next, in a somewhat surprising move from my standpoint (but certainly not complaining), Stockwell has the team divided into four groups of five players to do some good ol' 5-on-5 full-court work. As I mentioned earlier, Stockwell and her staff are still very much in an evaluation mode and a situation such as this help to give her an inkling perhaps of what her newer players can bring to the table. The groups do 2-minute scrimmages against each other and this gives Stockwell a chance to see what these newer players can do on offense as well as defense - not to mention to notice where improvement is needed. For me, it's interesting to watch the new young players mix in with the returning veterans and I definitely saw a lot of hustle, desire and enthusiasm out there. After Stockwell has the team broken into small groups to work on free throws, short jumpers and lay-ups, she then gets the team into three different groups to work on lay-ups except now the person doing the lay-up has to come off of a would-be defender. Stockwell keeps modifying and tweaking the drill in her creative fashion that makes it challenging and fun for the players on this night. Next, Assistant Willie Taylor takes control of the team for the next 15-20 minutes of this practice as he has the team perform a wide variety of movement and dribbling/movement drills to work and improve the players' mobility on the floor. The team is very receptive of Taylor and the enthusiasm and great knowledge he brings to this program. The addition of Taylor to this coaching staff is a fantastic get for this program and it's just further proof of how much the quality of coaching has gone upward in the MIAC in the last ten years alone. Stockwell later has the team into two groups under each basket where the groups do 5-0 "shell"-type drills to simulate how the ball should move on offense. Stockwell then modifies this by having this go 5-on-5 halfcourt but again it's really more about ball/player movement and utilizing the shot clock than actual scrimmaging. Stockwell then has the groups doing some 3-on-3 work to work on the rebounding and boxing out aspects that she will surely want to work more on in future practices. Lastly, Stockwell has the team do something fun at the end. She has all the players line up on the baseline and they're supposed to walk in an exact straight line down to the other baseline. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Well, it's not and it takes roughly seven or eight attempts before they FINALLY figure out how to do it correctly. I'm not 100% sure but I wonder if the real focus and purpose of this was to have the players figure out something on their own out on the floor without being told exactly what to do. And perhaps the other by-product of doing something like this helps promote team chemistry; something that is so critical to the success of any basketball program. In any event, it was a fun way to end the evening and when the team makes it to the other end in a straight line they erupt in shouts and cheers! Outtakes: As I mentioned at the beginning, this is in many ways a completely different Hamline team than what we've seen the last couple of years with the thirteen new freshman joining the squad. It's safe to say that the leadership on the floor will fall on lone senior Je'Naya Brown and junior Jordan Sammons who is perhaps the best athlete in the conference. Still, it's hard to replace a triumvirate of seniors such as Steph Pilgrim, Kara "The Natural" Poirer and Cassidy "Lightning" Vogt. This will still be a team with an incredible amount of speed and athleticism out on the perimeter but bringing along and getting the new freshmen post players up to speed will take time. For the moment anyway, you would have to figure that junior Rachel Usgaard will likely be Stockwell's choice to patrol the paint in the near term. I still feel that this is a team that can be in the mix for that sixth playoff spot at the end of the regular season but their margin for error will arguably be smaller than what it was this last season.