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.