VCU to A-10 Billboard
http://www.timesdispatch.com/sports...cle_0d2bd6bb-923e-5230-9acf-7ae4dddee6e6.htmlRams close on funding for practice facility
VCU athletics director Ed McLaughlin said the school is “very close” to raising the money to construct a $14-16 million basketball practice facility.
McLaughlin had hoped to have fundraising completed by now but said VCU still is trying to finalize some gifts.
The facility will require approval from the board of visitors before construction can begin.
“(The preseason) gives us the opportunity to put a lot of different combinations on the floor and see a lot of different matchups within our team,” Smart said in an email. “As we start moving towards competition against other opponents, we should gain a better understanding of how our new guys fit in with our returning guys and how guys’ roles will be adjusted from last year.”
A new NCAA rule allows teams to start practice 42 days before their first game and have more practices and more days off.
Smart likes the new rule because it should help his players better handle the demands of VCU’s pressing style. In previous seasons, 24 practices were squeezed into 30 days.
The new rule gives teams 30 practices in 42 days. That adds six practices, but also adds six days off.
“I always felt like most teams I’ve been a part of have gone Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday . . . and at least multiple times a day on the weekends,” Smart said. “It always seemed like by the end of that stretch, we were dealing with some type of injury.
“Physically, you go from having two hours a week on the court to that four-day stretch, and you’re talking about practicing potentially 16 hours. Now, we can go a couple of days on, a day off. Maybe even multiple days off. It actually gives us more flexibility to rest our guys.
“For our style of play, we do conditioning and stuff in the preseason, but the only way our guys can get into the shape we want them in is to play the way we play. Now, we don’t have to kill them six days a week.”
VCU’s biggest question mark is establishing a point guard. Junior Briante Weber (5.4 points, 2.7 assists, 2.7 steals) was the backup last year. Smart also has freshmen JeQuan Lewis and Jairus Lyles and others who can play the position.
“We have a variety of guys who will compete over the next six weeks,” he said. “After those six weeks when the games roll around, we’ll figure out who should play the majority of the minutes, the backup minutes, the emergency minutes and we’ll go from there.”
It's easy to see why VCU is so good at its HAVOC defense. The Rams' coach excels at the art of deflection.
Ask Shaka Smart to talk about his team's place in the Atlantic 10 hierarchy and he'll happily filibuster his way to a league-wide PSA, touching on La Salle's Sweet 16 run last season, Saint Louis' league title and up-and-coming UMass.
Those are all good, relevant points, but they ignore the real truth: In just its second season in the Atlantic 10, VCU is the conference Glam Team.
The conference realignment shuffle pushed Butler, Temple and Xavier on to new addresses, leaving behind a conference that is still good and viable, but lacks the name-brand cachet those programs provided.
Except in one place, and that's in Richmond. VCU is the league's national program, the one with the bold reputation and the popular coach. It may seem like the Rams have been around forever, but really theirs is a stratospheric rise. Just three seasons ago, VCU was a nice, little engine that could story, from First Four to Final Four out of the Colonial Athletic Association.
Then two seasons later, partnered with Butler, the Rams added even more panache to an already established A-10.
Now they are the star attraction.
It is a terrific problem to have, but it has the chance to really be a problem. And Smart knows it.
There is, however, one example of a team that never strayed from itself and that's who Smart went to for advice.
Mark Few has built Gonzaga up from a nice, little March Cinderella to a national power. The Bulldogs have changed in perception and opportunity, but not in their essence. Their players are more talented but still from the same mold; the Zags are more widely known but still known for the same things.
The two coaches have spoken frequently since VCU's Final Four run. Few is convinced that Smart won't fall into the success trap -- "He's as grounded and as solid as an individual I've ever met in coaching. I don't worry about him at all,'' Few said.
Still, he offered the younger coach a priceless outline of what to expect -- that the recruits would come before the splashy scheduling opportunities; that the road games would be impossibly loud no matter how empty the gyms looked on tape; and most critically, that while everything around him changed, his job was to make sure absolutely nothing changed.
"It's all about patience,'' Few said. "On the one end, you want to hurry up and make it happen. On the other end, you have to be selective and not lose sight of what put you there in the first place.''
Few's path has proven to be almost presciently exact. Already the recruits are asking in to VCU, more high-caliber players than Smart's had a chance to speak with before.
Next year's class currently is rated 15th by ESPNU.
But those players -- Terry Larrier, Jonathan Williams, Mike Gilmore and Justin Tillman -- are merely the same players Smart's always recruited, just with a few more stars next to their names.
"We need to make sure we get the same type of DNA in our basketball players,'' Smart said. "Maybe now we can get someone who is a little further along, but we have to get the same type of player. We can't get away from the Briante Weber. Ever.''
As Team Glam in the Atlantic 10, a team sure to be on everyone's preseason top 25, VCU will be expected to play a top-level schedule.
And with a more unknown quantity Atlantic 10, the Rams need a top-level schedule to get bonus points from the selection committee.
VCU would love to accommodate.
Just try convincing teams to come to Richmond.
"We feel from an RPI standpoint we should be relatively attractive to play a home-and-home with, but we just haven't reached that point that Gonzaga reached, that Xavier reached, that Brad [Stevens] reached at Butler,'' Smart said. "It's still not OK to play us home-and-home.''
It will be eventually, Few said.
There's just no telling when eventually may come.
Strong words from Dana O'Neil. If the target wasn't already on VCU, pretty sure it is now.Until the invitation is extended and VCU can build up a national schedule like Gonzaga has, the Rams will have to contend with the other side of the scheduling coin -- being everybody's favorite target in the Atlantic 10.
La Salle wrote the final lines of its 2012-13 story in March, but penned the first chapter in January, when the Explorers beat Butler and VCU in back-to-back games.
After beating the Rams, La Salle's Ramon Galloway called it, "the biggest step probably in LaSalle program history."
And now Butler is gone, along with Temple and Xavier.
Sure, Smart is right. La Salle and Saint Louis could very well be on their way to joining the Establishment. UMass might be on the cusp of a return to glory. Richmond might get back its mojo. Ditto Dayton.
But those are coulds and maybes and mights.
The only sure thing in the Atlantic 10 is VCU.
And that's a good problem to have.
The backlash is bound to happen soon.
You know how this works: As soon as any style or system or musical genre or meme or anything else reaches cultural critical mass, people get sick of hearing about it. They get grumpy. They start finding flaws, start calling names, start parsing the image from the substance. The Internet allows us to wage these backlashes publicly and at lightning speed, but it's not a new phenomenon. We're Americans. We build you up, and we tear you down. It's always been this way.
Since 2011, when Shaka Smart led his suddenly scorching Rams from the First Four in Dayton to the Final Four in Houston, VCU men's basketball has been on the steady, comfortable ascension portion of the backlash curve. More specifically, the defensive style pioneered by Smart -- HAVOC, he calls it, in all capitals -- has become the hottest, and best-branded, system in all of college hoops. The best part? It works.
Well, sort of. This is why I fear the backlash: Because HAVOC, in which Smart's players aggressively smother opposing ball handlers over the entire floor, for the entire game, got exposed.
Very good point. Should be interesting to see how VCU looks in that regard this year.Just a few months after the Rams dominated point guard-less Butler, and had the whole world singing HAVOC's praises, a team with a very good point guard proved that if VCU couldn't force turnovers, it couldn't get stops. The numbers bore that out: In 2012-13, VCU forced opponents to turn the ball over on 28.5 percent of its possessions, the highest mark in the country. But if teams didn't turn the ball over, they shot well, grabbed a ton of offensive rebounds, and went to the free throw line all the time. In March, when Naismith player of the year Trey Burke shrugged off the HAVOC, VCU's high-octane system shut down.
That's why this is a pivotal season for the Rams, and for Smart. This may be his most talented team, with few obvious challengers in the realignment-thinned Atlantic 10. But can VCU adjust? Can it force gobs of turnovers without surrendering the other defensive factors? This is the defining question of VCU's 2013-14 season.
#VCU freshman guard Doug Brooks (knee) has returned to practice. "He was terrific recently in an intrasquad scrimmage," Shaka Smart said.