Already a great summer, and Bahamas still to come

By Rob Senderoff
Head Men's Basketball Coach

The NCAA passed a new rule that allows you to have eight weeks during the summer to work with your players.

This is week eight for us. Our whole team came back to campus in the middle of June. We've spent the majority of our time during the last eight weeks working on our individual skill level, and I think we've seen some improvements. Some of our new guys have caught up a little bit and they have become more up to speed with how we do things and the intensity with which we do them.

We've done a few team workouts where we've worked on some offensive and defensive concepts as well. Our last session for that will be Friday. On top of all of that, our kids have been lifting four days a week and conditioning with our strength and conditioning staff on Fridays.

It's been a pretty full summer.

I'm also very pleased that our team GPA for the first summer session was over a 3.40. So, we are happy with how our kids have performed in the classroom as well as how they've worked on the court.

Now, starting on Monday we have our 10 days of practice in preparation for our foreign tour. I'm really excited about that. The NCAA has a rule that allows teams to go on a foreign tour every four years. Our team is heading to the Bahamas on Aug. 18 for seven days, and we'll play four games while we are there.

From a coach's standpoint, those games are great, but I'm really looking forward to the practices. We'll have our entire team here to practice for that trip. We'll do a couple of days on and a couple of days off to get in those 10 practices. We'll do some shooting in the morning and then a two-to-three hour practice in the evening each day.

I'm looking forward to those practices because we have some guys who are going to need to expand their roles a little bit this year, and we have some new players, just like everyone does in the country. I'm looking forward to seeing how those guys develop over these 10 practices.

While we are in the Bahamas we will be staying at the Atlantis, which is a really nice resort down there. The same people who organized our trip to Italy, Basketball Travelers, are doing this trip for us. They do a great job of organizing the trips. Each day we will do something. Obviously we play the four games, but on the days we don't play games there are things planned for us. One day there is a full-day scavenger hunt for us. Another day there's a thing called "The Amazing Race." Lots of team-building exercises.

When we are in the Bahamas, the games are obviously important and we want them to compete. But we also want them to also have a good time. This is going to be a great team-building experience for the group and for our coaching staff to have this time together.

While we are there, a couple of our players will be blogging for our fans.