The Blade's UT men's basketball season preview will run in tomorrow's paper, and I was at practice earlier today to observe the team's progress and then talk with coach Tod Kowalczyk and a couple of his players about the upcoming season.
The Rockets open the 2011-12 season Friday against Texas State in the Texas-Pan American tournament in Edinburg, Texas, and I can say for certain they've already come a long way since preseason practices started earlier this fall.
UT's seven-man rotation of junior G Dominique Buckley, sophomore G Rian Pearson, sophomore F Matt Smith, sophomore G Reese Holliday, sophomore C DeLino Dear, freshman PG Juice Brown and freshman G Ryan Majerle have already developed a nice chemistry. Junior G Curtis Dennis will join the rotation in mid-December once he becomes eligible to play after sitting out his mandatory one year following his transfer from New Mexico last January.
Obviously with such few players, though, staying healthy will be a huge priority for the Rockets. If that happens, they'll win a lot more games than last year. How many is hard to say, but the words "competing for a championship" have been thrown around quite a bit in preseason practices. That may be a little ambitious, but for a program that's starving for success, it's hard to blame them.
Here's a few snippets from my interviews today with Kowalczyk, Pearson and Smith:
KOWALCZYK: "We like this team. We think this is a team that has a chance and an opportunity to be very good."
PEARSON: "I'm ready to get going. We've been getting focused all week and we're ready to start our first game. I'm looking forward to it."
KOWALCZYK: "I like playing in these preseason tournaments and having a chance with a young team and a team that is relatively all new guys to be able to get away for four games and be gone basically one full week. I think it's great. We get away from parents and girlfriends and distractions. It's just us. It's just our basketball tight circle. I think that's a good thing for a young team to bond and grow together and experience success and adversity together too."
PEARSON: "We had a [intrasquad] scrimmage this past Saturday, and coack K got the rotations going. We'll get a two-minute breather or something like that and then go right back in. I like that, just getting a quick blow and then getting right back into the game."
KOWALCZYK: "I don't think we have one guy that night-to-night is going to lead us in scoring. I think with this team -- and I truly believe this -- we've got seven guys that could on any given night score 20 points. Majerle had 19 [in the exhibition game], so he could do it. RP obviously can do it. Juice already has done it. I think Dominique Buckley can do it. Reese Holliday did it last year. And then Curtis and Matt without question can do it. So, we've got a lot of guys that can score. Good teams share the ball and they share scoring opportunities. I think this team is very unselfish. They do a great job of making one more pass, and they generally like making that extra pass."
SMITH: "It's different playing in an exhibition than it is in the regular season. The intensity just goes to the next level. And then it does the same thing once we get to MAC play and then postseason. So, I'm more than excited. I can't even explain it."
KOWALCZYK: "I think our team defense and our halfcourt defense is good. Our transition defense was not good the other night [in the exhibition game]. I give credit to Northwestern Ohio because they did a great job of getting the ball inbounds. But when we get our defense set, our halfcourt defense is good. But we've got to get set and we've got to rebound the ball better than what we have been doing."
SMITH: "Each day I think we're getting more feel for the game, we're trusting each other more, we're playing more together than we have been lately, so I'm feeling really confident in us."
KOWALCZYK: "A step forward for us is to try to compete for a championship. We're by no means a finished product. We have a long way to go, but I like this team. I think it's a talented team. If we stay healthy, we're going to have a chance to be a team that I would like to think at the end of the season is as good as anybody in our league."