Weight room yields camaraderie and broken records

Note: Kellon Thomas is a junior on the Kent State men's basketball team and is working for the Athletics Communication department during the Summer to fulfill a requirement of his Practicum I in Sport Administration course. As part of this course, Kellon will be doing a weekly blog to give fans an inside look at how the Golden Flashes are preparing for the 2014-15 season.

Kellon Thomas broke Mike
McKee's power clean record for
Kent State guards this past week.

Our team has now completed seven weeks of summer training, with just one more left. We did testing and maxing out in the weight room this past week, which is different than our usual weight training. Coach Bob spent all summer training to us to get strong, faster and more explosive, and then tested us this week to see our progress.

On Tuesday we did our power clean test, and I broke the program record for guards at 274 pounds. Our director of ops, Mike McKee, was the previous record holder at 270 pounds back in 2009. All of my teammates, Coach Bob, and even Coach McKee, were cheering and motivating me throughout the lift. It was a great feeling after I had completed the lift, and everyone was going crazy and celebrating .Khaliq Spicer, my roommate and probably the teammate I am closest with, lifted me up as if we had won a championship.

It felt good to break the record, but it felt even better that I had the support of my teammates. I like how unselfish we are as a team, and one person’s success excites us all. We have learned to push each other, compete, and be great teammates all in what seems like a short 7 weeks looking back.

Even though it was testing week in the weight room, we still had our two 30-minute individuals and our one-hour team practice. We continued working on some basic concepts we put in to help us for our upcoming year, such as our base offenses, defensive strategies, and ball screen offense and defense.

We worked a lot on post entries and playing out of the post, which I think this will be a bigger emphasis this year. We have great guard play, but we will also have a great presence down low this upcoming season with the addition of guys like Jimmy Hall, Raasean Davis, Blake Vedder and Marvin Jones. I feel like our returning bigs—Khaliq, Chris Ortiz and Marquiez Lawrence— have all shown improvement throughout the summer as well.

The intensity last practice was very good and we were all competing. We have to continue to push ourselves and try to get better each time so that we can be one of the top teams in our league. 

Special guest provides motivation to work harder

Note: Kellon Thomas is a junior on the Kent State men's basketball team and is working for the Athletics Communication department during the Summer to fulfill a requirement of his Practicum I in Sport Administration course. As part of this course, Kellon will be doing a weekly blog to give fans an inside look at how the Golden Flashes are preparing for the 2014-15 season

We finished off week six with some on-court conditioning with Coach Bob. Each week, we do conditioning on Friday and I feel like we get stronger each week as a team. Another one of the new players on our team, Xavier Pollard, got to campus this week for the beginning of a new summer school session. Xavier, who will be redshirting and sitting out this season, participated in this week’s workouts and also played open gym with us this week also. Xavier is a smooth guard that can score and will really help out this team.

Earlier in the week Coach Sendy asked one of his former players and good friends, D.J. White, to come in and speak with our team. D.J. graduated from Indiana and was drafted 29th in the first round back in 2008. He spoke to our team about what it really takes to make it to the NBA and overseas, and also how to apply yourself to get ready.

In between his junior and senior year of college, D.J. went from a second round draft pick or maybe not being drafted at all to a first round draft pick, which guaranteed him about $5.6 million for his rookie contract, along with his Nike contract. D.J. said he lost about twenty pounds during this time, did strength and agility work about three times a week, and basketball workouts twice a day.

Hearing his story first-hand, really lit up the eyes on some of the guys on our team, including myself. We all have aspirations of playing at the next level, so actually hearing what it takes and what we need to change really lit a fire under us.

Coach Sendy challenged our team by getting at least 10,000 shots up on the gun or by ourselves for that entire week by Sunday night. We finished the week with 11,360. I feel that D.J. coming in really helped our team focus more and work harder. I also feel this will continue to help our team work even harder as we try to reach our team goals and individual goals.

Continued emphasis on defense and coming together as a team

Note: Kellon Thomas is a junior on the Kent State men's basketball team and is working for the Athletics Communication department during the Summer to fulfill a requirement of his Practicum I in Sport Administration course. As part of this course, Kellon will be doing a weekly blog to give fans an inside look at how the Golden Flashes are preparing for the 2014-15 season.

 

This week marks week 5 of our 8-week summer program. We started off this week on Monday with an hour team practice. Defense was the main focus for this week, doing some basic shell drill and defensive drills. We also played more in the half court, which let us focus on better executing our offense in the amount of time that was on the shot clock. This team practice was very productive in the sense of everyone is learning and progressing.

Coach Haynes talked to me about coming off ball screens and changing pace and also being able to know my next move. It is always good to talk to Coach Haynes because he really knows the game from the point guard position and he has been a big part of my growth here at Kent State.

All of our on-court skill workouts we done in the beginning of the week because our coaches are currently on the road recruiting at AAU tournaments. We still had our 4 days of lifting this week and then conditioning on Friday. Deputy Athletic Director Devin Crosby joined us in running the hill, which was pretty cool to see him in an environment different than what we’re used to.

I can see our team developing and becoming more of a team just by the way we all bond with each other. We have showed our new guys the Kent State tradition and we have all brought them aboard to trying to reach our goal of winning a championship.

New month marks halfway point of summer training

Note: Kellon Thomas is a junior on the Kent State men's basketball team and is working for the Athletics Communication department during the Summer to fulfill a requirement of his Practicum I in Sport Administration course. As part of this course, Kellon will be doing a weekly blog to give fans an inside look at how the Golden Flashes are preparing for the 2014-15 season.

This past week marked the halfway point of our eight-week training program. We had our elite camp for high school players Monday night, which went on from about 5-9:20. During this time, some of our guys demonstrated a short 20-minute workout for the campers to see the type of drills and work ethic it takes to play at Kent State.

It was a shortened week with the holiday, but we still had our scheduled individual workouts Tuesday and Thursday, and another one-hour team practice on Wednesday. During this hour, we continued to work on some of our offense and things we need for the season. One of the things we worked on more this week was ballscreens and how we want to defend them. Coach Sendy had us run a drill where you earn points for getting defensive stops, not offensive scores. I like when he does this because it puts our mindset towards getting defensive stops and not worried about offense. One area we have to improve from last year is playing better on defense. We have plenty of scorers and playmakers but playing in a league such as the MAC, you have to win games on the defensive end.

On Thursday, we did another team-building and conditioning event. We had a mini track meet of seven events. Although I do not like conditioning, I like being with my team getting better and knowing that we are all chasing the same goal. Our freshman, Raasean Davis was on my team for the track meet. He is new to this type of work ethic and some might have been questioning him because of his size but he really surprised me how well he ran. He finished every sprint and timed event in the time he was supposed to. We will need him and his size to be successful this season.