Practice continues as Marquiez Lawrence is defensive player of the day 3 days in a row

By Rob Senderoff

Head Coach

We will be practicing today, Tuesday and Wednesday and then we’ll be off on Thursday. It will be the first time we have gone three straight days.

We gave the guys the weekend off, and we are looking forward to getting three straight days in as we get closer to our first game one month from tomorrow on Nov. 15.

I’ve been really pleased so far by the improvement of a lot of our guys. It is amazing the growth we are seeing in our returning players, especially from the guys who are going from their freshman to their sophomore years. 

At the end of every day, all of our coaches watch the film of practice and vote for the defensive player of the day. We have a board up in the locker room to announce who that person is. We’ve had six practices now, and it had been somebody different each of the first three days. But over the last three days, Marquiez Lawrence has won it three straight times. He is leading our team in deflections, rebounding and rebounding percentage, in terms of how often he is going.

I look back at where Marquiez was a year ago and where he is now, and it really makes me realize how much growth guys make in between that freshman and sophomore year. With also see that with junior college players between their junior and senior years. We saw that with Chris Evans a few years back.

We are very excited about the week ahead. We’ll bring in officials on Wednesday when we do some scrimmaging. We are putting some new things in, so our pace is moving a little quicker. We are putting in our out-of-bounds plays, press break, a new series of offensive plays that is something we have done before but new for this year. There is a lot of work to do layering your offense and defense, trying to improve upon A and B before you get to C, but knowing at some point you have to get to C.

Our seniors have done a nice job in practice and everyone else has followed their lead.  I think we have been getting better on a daily basis. There is still a long way to go, though.