Diary Series - Jim McCarthy, Asst. Coach - Northeastern

It’s great to be back for another season with College Chalktalk.

Last season, VCU’s run from the First Four to the Final Four illustrated the overall quality and depth of our conference.  They were the second team from the CAA to make the Final Four in the last five years (George Mason in 2006) and it’s worth noting that NEITHER team won the regular season title or conference tournament championship in those seasons! 

Like many mid-strong mid-major conferences there are countless quality teams, different styles of play, tough opposing venues, and excellent coaches throughout the league, and this season shapes up to be another competitive journey.  It’s great for this post-season success to highlight the consistency of high-caliber teams in the CAA.

It has been a relatively uneventful fall for us here at Northeastern.  We didn’t take a foreign trip, don’t have anyone waiting to get cleared by the NCAA, aren’t waiting for someone to come back from injury shortly, aren’t scrambling to complete our non-conference schedule, and had no changes on our coaching staff.   We know that’s not often the case!

We did, however, do a couple new things with our pre-season workouts. This pre-season we tried to utilize some of the six hours we’re given to condition “without a basketball” to implement some of our defensive concepts and teaching points.  Our guys still worked out in the weight room, but we also spent time on the court doing various drills that emphasized closeouts, positioning, ball screen defense, and how to guard certain actions that we will see multiple times during the season. 

Also, we’ve talked to our players about placing more of an emphasis on recognizing the offensive strengths of themselves, their teammates, and opponents.  At various points, we tested our players shooting ability from different spots and “graded” their scores (shooting percentage).  We’ll continue to do this (so guys have a chance to improve their score) and hope that it will help us understand strengths and weaknesses on our own team and with scouting reports when we start playing games in November.

We have a young team with our only senior being a transfer, Kashief Edwards.  Kashief graduated from Niagara University in 2011 and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Sports Leadership.  Our captains will be junior guards, Jon Lee and Joel Smith.  Although only juniors, they’ve demonstrated the qualities that Coach Coen values for our program – work ethic, positive attitude and body language, humility, and the ability to bring people together during tough times.

Looking forward to reading College Chalktalk this season and hope everyone will have a chance to follow Northeastern Basketball. 

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