February 19, 2012

Nothing compares to back-to-back nights in the Ivy

As February hits, and the season comes down the stretch, league and conference matchups become more critical each night that you step on the court.  Each game consists of 40 minutes of hustle, sweat, and sacrifice to try and get a leg up on your opponent in the race for a berth in the NCAA tournament.  After a game, players are battered, sometimes bloody, and always exhausted.  Coaches are mentally fried, and emotionally spent.  Now imagine doing it all over again…THE NEXT NIGHT!

Welcome to the Ivy League.

I have had the privilege of coaching at five separate NCAA Division I programs.  Nothing has come close to rival the ups and downs we experience at Cornell during an Ivy League weekend, especially when you’re on the road!

A typical Ivy League weekend begins on Thursday with an afternoon departure for the first road game site.  Ithaca is the further away than any other city in the Ivy League, so we typically have four to five hours on the road.  Although there is time for rest and entertainment, our players also wisely use the time to get ahead of their studies.  Their commitment to academics is impressive.  In fact, Chris Wroblewski and Eitan Chemerinski were just honored for their outstanding work in the classroom and on the court!  http://www.cornellbigred.com/news/2012/2/2/MBB_0202123341.aspx

After the bus ride, we head to the gymnasium for practice.  We’ll go over the opponent’s sets, personnel, and continue to implement our game plan.  However, our primary goal is to get comfortable with the environment we will be playing in the next night.  After practice, we head to our hotel for dinner and a film session before getting the players rest for the next two days ahead.

Friday starts off with breakfast and film before heading to our shoot-around.  Preparation on game day is focused on Cornell and how we want to play.  After our shoot-around we head back to our hotel for some rest before our pre-game meal.  A final look at some game tape takes us into our first game of the weekend.  A week of preparation is boiled into two halves of basketball.

Win or lose, the mood changes after the first night of Ivy League play, especially on the road.  Immediately after the game we get on the bus for a ride of anywhere between one and three hours.  The players try their best to rest and rehydrate following a grueling few hours of game play.  Coaches watch film to evaluate the game, and go over points of emphasis for the following day.  A day that can last up to 15 hours ends when the team arrives at the new hotel just shy of midnight.

Saturday starts earlier for the coaches than our players.  The staff will meet before breakfast to go over the game plan and strategy for that night’s game.  The players only have a brief period to absorb information for the game, so Saturday becomes much more about principles and key thoughts.  After breakfast, our players will watch film on that night’s opponent before heading to shoot around.  I am constantly amazed at how well our players absorb and synthesize information on the fly!   Our Saturday shoot around is a quick chance to walk through some opponents sets, but mainly to get used to the new environment and get the legs moving again.  After we return from shoot around, rest becomes the top priority leading up to pre-game meal.  Winning on Saturday night in the Ivy League usually comes down to whose physical and mental energy is at a higher level, so we do all we can to help our players recover!

After a Saturday night game, we immediately board the bus and begin another four or five hour drive back to Ithaca.  A trip that has spanned eight meals, three practices, at least five film sessions, and 80 minutes or more of intense Ivy League basketball hopefully ends with two wins!  Winning on the road in college basketball is challenging enough as it is.  I hope you can now see why doing it in the Ivy League is quite possibly the hardest challenge in all of Division I!

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