Men's basketball taking preseason slow
10/23/2010 4:16:00 PM | Athletics
By Cody Stark The Huntsville Item
Sam Houston State basketball coach Jason Hooten has been pleased with what he has seen out of his team after a week of preseason camp. The effort has been good, and for the most part, the guys seem to have done a good job of conditioning over the past few weeks before camp started on Friday.
Things are going slowly as the Bearkats implement new drills and begin to work on the basics of Hooten's offensive and defensive philosophies. But the players aren't the only ones learning the ropes. The first-year head coach understands that it is important to be patient because everything isn't going to happen overnight.
"It is very basic right now. We are putting in drills, but it is mainly just boot camp type stuff as far as conditioning goes," Hooten said. "My assistants are telling me every day that we probably need to step it up, and I was probably saying that last year as an assistant coach. I don't want to take it too fast. I'm kind of old school, and I've been taught that if you throw some things in there before they are ready, you will miss some of the ingredients that you needed.
"It's like baking a cake. You leave something out and it won't be as good as it was. I'm going to take things slow."
Hooten has the key ingredients to bake a pretty good cake. The Bearkats return a solid core of players off last year's squad which won the Southland Conference regular-season and tournament championships.
With four new faces added to the mix, seniors Gilberto Clavell, Josten Crow and Lance Pevehouse and juniors Antuan Bootle and Drae Murray will need to be the glue to bring everything together.
Right now, all those drills in practice are helping to shape this unit into a team.
"Everybody is working on drills right now because you have to build the new guys up to where the old guys are and go from there," Pevehouse said. "I think we are going to be good. We have to have everybody who came in step up and fill the void of the guys we lost. The people that have come back, we just have to keep getting better."
Tuesday afternoon, the Bearkats spent a lot of time working on defensive drills. As it was under former head coach Bob Marlin, Hooten is going to make sure Sam Houston State focuses on defense as the Kats get ready to defend their title when the season opens Nov. 13 against Mary Hardin-Baylor at Johnson Coliseum.
"We are really starting from the ground level on our man-to-man defense," Hooten said. "It is like putting a puzzle together. If you take a box of puzzle pieces and throw it out on the floor, it doesn't put itself together. We are working hard right now, trying to put that thing together."
