Diary Series: Mike Witcoskie, Asst. Coach - Rider

I’m very excited to be a part of College Chalktalk this year and also excited for the start of the new year.  Each year brings its own set of challenges and amazingly its own set of answers.  Much like snowflakes, each year is unique.  What may have worked in preseason last year or even the last time you had a similar team may not be the best way to teach this year’s team.  So one of the biggest challenges for a team is how to best prepare your team for the season?

This preseason was like none other for us.  We have had more injuries and issues with the NCAA in terms of eligibility than ever before.  It has put pressure on us to figure out first, who was in each workout/practice, and second what we should be teaching during that time.  Out of our 12 scholarship players, we have had five guys miss significant preseason time.  That gave us seven scholarship players for quite a few practices.    It was tough and very challenging at times, but with our great staff we were able to prepare our guys properly.  Head Coach Tommy Dempsey may be young, but he is experienced having been a head coach since the age of 24.  Coach Dempsey thoroughly thinks through all options and relies on the input of assistants Kevin Baggett, Ben Luber and myself.

One of the biggest questions we have debated in the office is, if five guys are not in practice do you teach new concepts or continue to get better at the core values of your offense and defense?  There were some new concepts that we had to move on and teach without a few guys in practice.  It was important for the guys who were out to get mental reps.  Once they came back, we had to slow things down and re-teach some concepts, but at that point we had to progress with the guys that were practicing. 

Our players have worked extremely hard and our seniors, Novar Gadson, Brandon Penn and Jeff Jones, have been good leaders.  They were asked, like many of our players, to play different roles and some that they didn’t think they would be playing going into the season.  Gradually, the eligibility issues have been solved and guys have gotten back to full health and we’ve had some of our best practices leading up to the start of the season.  In my experience, the best practices are filled with competition.  We have a very talented team, but this game is about finding the five players that play the best together.  We keep stressing to our guys that we may not be the best team in the league right now, but all that matters is being the best team in March.  Our focus is on working to be a better team today than we were yesterday and improve a little more each day. 

This year should be an exciting year for the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.  The league is getting some great publicity with Iona and Fairfield and, as a group, we like being one of the underdogs.  Both of those teams deserve the publicity they are getting as they have put together two very good teams.  I think we also have one of our better teams.  Our top six players are as good a group as we have had here.  The key to our season will be the development of our young guys.  They need to become more disciplined defensively and understand what we are trying to do offensively. 

I’m very excited for this year as it should be another great year for Rider Basketball and hopefully a fun year contributing to College Chalktalk.  I think it will be a great learning experience to put my thoughts 'on paper' and I would love to hear from readers on topics or questions regarding our team or basketball in general.

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