VCU to A-10 Billboard
Shaka Smart on depth: "I'd really like to get to the point where we're playing nine, 10, 11 guys." #LetsGoVCU
Smart says Rob Brandenberg getting lots of reps at PG in practice. Played a fair amount there w/ Global Sports Acad. this summer #LetsGoVCU
Smart says he'd love to see something in the vein of a Big East/A-10 challenge type event. #LetsGoVCU
Smart sent a photo of Barclays to his six returners this morning. Wouldn't reveal the accompanying message, but you can infer. #LetsGoVCU
Smart had some good things to say about La Salle point guard Tyreek Duren. Says the Rams tried to recruit him out of HS. Calls him "true PG"
Smart on the yearly "mid-major" line of questioning: "Is this league mid-major? I think not. Come to our arena and see if that's mid-major."
Smart says he also hopes to see @SpikeLee back on the sidelines for the A-10 Tournament again this March. "Spike's a VCU fan." #LetsGoVCU
Smart is looking forward to Sunday's Black & Gold Game (6 p.m.). Hopes to see a big crowd at The Stu. #LetsGoVCU
On leaving VCU:
“I’m spreading the word today. VCU is the place to be. Come down, spend some time around there and you’ll see. I really enjoy it there. My family enjoys it there. Number one reason that I love it at VCU is because everyday I come to work, and I am just so excited and eager to be around our players and be around our coaching staff. I think that’s what any of us look for in a job.”- VCU coach Shaka Smart
On Brad Stevens taking the Celtics job:
“Yeah but he left me. I was not shocked. Not at all. He and I had talked. He had talked and I had listened about the NBA several times in the past, and that is something that has intrigued him for a while. Brad is a basketball guy. He loves coaching. He loves the X’s and O’s. He loves studying his team and finding ways to make it better. He’s excited about the challenge at that level to do those things. It was sad to see him go. He was one of the best coaches in the country, and certainly a guy I really admire. He’s still coaching, he’s just not in college basketball.”- Smart
What would the lure be to go to the NBA:
“For myself, I haven’t really thought about it. It is such a different level. I’m a fan of the NBA. I have always enjoyed following the NBA and watching the best players in the world play basketball. But it is just so very different. Somebody asked me if I was ready for a new challenge. We have a new challenge every year. Every year it is a new challenge with a new team and new personnel. This is a very challenging job, being a college basketball coach. The NBA is the highest level of basketball, but this is challenging too.”- Smart
They’ll be good because …: By now, we all know about Havoc, the all-out, full-court press that Shaka Smart’s teams constantly utilize. It’s what they’re known for, it’s what the program takes pride in, and it’s the game that gives opposing point guards nightmares. That press is devastating, especially when you consider just how well-conditioned these athletes are. They never get tired. It’s demoralizing.
But what makes the Rams especially dangerous this season is that their depth is just ridiculous. Sophomore Melvin Johnson and redshirt freshman Jordan Burgess, the younger brother of former VCU star Brad Burgess, are both former top 100 recruits. And they will both come off the bench this year. Jairus Lyles and JeQuan Lewis could have gone to schools in power conferences. Jarrod Guest, when he gets healthy, will be able to provide minutes up front to spell Juvonte Reddic and Florida State transfer Terrance Shannon. The waves of that press just aren’t going to stop this year.
But they might disappoint because …: I have a couple concerns about VCU replacing players they lost from last season. Darius Theus was more valuable to the Rams than he got credit for, as a point guard and as a leader. He’ll be tough to replace; Briante Weber, Rob Brandenburg and Johnson are quite talented, but they aren’t “true” point guards. It will also be interesting to see where VCU replaces Troy Daniels’ perimeter shooting. He made 124 threes last season. As a team, VCU his 278. That’s a big loss.
But the biggest concern I have with VCU is that they struggle against teams that can beat their press. VCU’s defense last season was 31st in the country in efficiency, leading the nation with a ridiculous 28.5% turnover percentage. Many of those turnovers led to layups, dunks and wide-open threes. It’s how the system works. But if they don’t get that turnover? They were 294th nationally in defensive rebounding percentage, 226th in defensive effective field goal percentage and 272 in free throw rate. That’s why teams with talented and/or veteran guards — a la St. Louis — can give the Rams trouble.
Outlook: I love the makeup of this roster for VCU. Juvonte Reddic is a beast in the paint, and with Terrance Shannon on the roster, he’ll have some help in the paint this season. Weber, Brandenburg and the rest of VCU’s hellishly-quick back court will force plenty of turnovers, and Treveon Graham is back for what should be a big junior season.
The difference maker on this team? Jordan Burgess. Like Graham, he’s a big, strong three that can get a three just as well as he can grab a rebound. His presence on the roster is what will give Smart so much more lineup flexibility. Smart can go with a small lineup, using Graham and Burgess together at the forwards spots, and not have to worry about playing a team with three guards on the floor. That will allow Shannon to spell Reddic at the five spot more often.
The point guard issues are a bit disconcerting, especially when you consider that VCU was not a great team at executing in the half court last year. But that defense? That will make them the odds-on favorite to win the Atlantic 10 this season.
There are moments in a college basketball career, lots of them. Some truly define momentous and some are humbling. Still others cannot be recognized until after the fact. But it's all those moments, good and bad, that shape the stories and the memories that hang on the tongues of fans and in the hearts of players and coaches.
Rob Brandenberg has seen them all, and he has one final year to make more. He begins his senior season next month 117 points from 1,000 on his career, and 28 wins shy of becoming (with Juvonte Reddic) VCUs alltime winningest player.
Oh, there are moments, and Brandenberg is about to begin his fourth season of creating them. There is the possibility he will undertake a new challenge--point guard. Brandenberg played the point during his tour of Europe this summer and gained valuable experience at the position.
"When my name is called to run the team I feel very confident that I can and will do it," he says. "I just have to continue to get reps in practice and work at it. It's like anythig in life; you have to work at something to be great at it."
Brandenberg also looks to replace Darius Theus as the team's leader. That is perhaps more important than any on-court or statistical measure. He is confident.
"Me and Darius are two different leaders," says Brandenberg. "He was vocal and the heart and soul of the team but I pride myself on doing things the right way and setting a good example my teammates can look up to. The way I lead is by example."
It all seems to fit for Brandenberg. His actions match his personality. He retains his incredible athleticism but it's tempered with a senior's maturity. His choice to lead by example fits. He is no phony. And to a man Brandenberg is described as a good kid, a nice kid. It makes you wonder how he turns on his rattlesnake when the game begins, how he gets that look in his eye when he turns the corner at the elbow and attacks both his man and the basket.
"Well that's one thing coach is always on me about," he says. "He says it's good to be that way off the court but it's a different mentality on the court. I've struggled with it in the past but I've gotten better at taking no prisoners and always attack, attack attack. It's a decision I have to constantly make."
Smart has said without fail that Brandenberg has had the best summer of any of the Rams--he's worked harder than ever before and it shows. There's a bounce in Brandenberg's step, but Smart also knows Brandenberg must step a little farther out of his comfort zone.
“We need Rob to assert himself and say ‘first of all this is my team,’” says Smart, “to take control and ownership of all the things that happen with this team on and off the court. We’re confident he’s ready to do that.”
There's a confidence to Brandenberg we haven't seen before. And if you're thinking "he's used the word confidence a lot" it's on purpose. One job of a coach is to help his players grow and develop on the court, but also as young men. Brandenberg is a good kid, a nice kid, a talented kid, who probably needed a shot of confidence. When you look back at Rob Brandenberg the young man, you can see he's grown immensely.
"Coach is defnitely one of the best people I've enountered in my life because of his values," says Brandenberg. "Those values on the basketbcall court translate to life very easily. I've learned to build from adversity and be appreciative and show enthusiasm for what I'm doing. I can take those values forward through the rest of my life in whatever I do."
But don't think any of that mitigates what Brandenberg--and the entire team--wants to accomplish this season. There's a sour taste in their mouths.
"We have unfinished business," he says. "One of our goals is to win the A10 regular season and get out of first weekend of the tournament. A Big Ten team knocked us out in round of 32 the past two years. There's definitely unfinished business."
The FOX Sports 1 telecast schedule from Barclays Center continues a week later on Saturday, Dec. 28 at 2:30 p.m. ET when St. John’s and Columbia tip-off in the first game of the 2nd annual BROOKLYN HOOPS™ Winter Festival presented by Honda, followed by Kansas State vs. Tulane at 5 p.m. ET, and Virginia Commonwealth University vs. Boston College at 7:30 p.m. ET.
The calls have come in from North Carolina State, Minnesota and UCLA, just to mention a few.
But each time, VCU coach Shaka Smart has politely declined, resisting the temptation of a BCS contract to stay put at the Atlantic 10 school in Richmond, where he has continued a tradition started by Jeff Capel and Anthony Grant.
Smart is a rising star in this profession, the best young coach in college basketball. VCU is paying him well, singing him to a new deal that will run through 2023 and pay him $1.5 million a year after he coached the upstart Rams to the NCAA Final Four in 2011. He has won 111 games the past four years and taken his team to three straight NCAA tournaments, transforming this commuter school into the Gonzaga of the East and selling out the Siegel Center 35 straight times.
Smart, a Kenyon College magna cum laude graduate who quotes Shakesphere and read Sun Tzu's "The Art of War", is intelligent enough to know when he has a good thing going.
The Rams are another classic example of a team that is narrowing the gap between itself and elite BCS schools that grab most of the media attention.
In the past eight years, George Mason, Butler (twice), VCU and most recently Wichita State have broken through the glass ceiling, making the improbable journey gonig from the First Four to the Final Four with upset victories over BCS powers USC, Georgetown, Purdue, Florida State and Kansas, the Southwest Regional's No. 1 seed. His 29 wins in 2012 were the most ever by a VCU team.
"We're narrowing the gap,'' Smart said. "But it's still an uphill climb.Just look at the Top 10 .You'll see all the blue blood. I would say the gap has been narrowed between the rest of the BCS schools and people like us, so maybe the teams at the middle of the pack or bottom of those leagues, they don't have those advantages over a program like ours they did maybe 20 years ago.''
"Even though we were new to the league [last year], there were certain places we went where people wanted to knock us off, people wanted go after us," Smart said. "We faced it to some extent last year, and hopefully this year we face it even more."
He doesn't seem to be worried about the expectations
15. VCU
It helps to have Treveon Graham and Juvonte Reddic back, plus several talented newcomers.
The Rams go hard, IT iS HAVOC! Honor to speak #VCU hoops clinic with @Gillenhoops and Shaka's staff. @ESPNCBB pic.twitter.com/tzPjxtBA92