How CSI’s basketball team is building its future
By: Jack Plaia
Youth is the CSI men’s basketball team’s biggest obstacle. On a team with only three seniors, a lot needs to change before the season opener on November 14th.
The teams head coach T.J. Tibbs doesn’t allow for any of his freshman players to be interviewed; however sophomore starting guard Leiton Woods has identified that the age of the team is at the forefront of the teams’ current concerns.
“I think the biggest challenge that we face as a team is simply the fact that we have a younger team this year,” said Woods. “This means that there will be a lot of new experiences for a lot of different guys and a lot of new people having to step up.”
In a 28-game season, including two games in the tournament of heroes, the team is primarily focused on its biggest competition which is against St. Thomas Aquinas College and Daemen university. Both colleges have significantly more seniors and juniors than CSI, and often because of this have more experienced players.
Tibbs has figured out that the best way to get new players prepared is to create a system that gets the players eager to move up and advance.
“Older guys will get a little more rope in this program because they’ve earned it,” said Tibbs. “Freshman don’t get any rope because they must make sure they are doing everything exactly right, just like any other real-world industry.”
Tibbs’ system of hierarchy of experience can be seen in real time in the team’s film sessions and practices. Juniors and seniors were allowed to joke around more and talk, whereas the freshmen and sophomores remained quieter and observant of what was being taught.
During the season, the team practices six times a week, watching an hour of film two to three times per week and lifting weights two to three times per week. Every day, the team gets at least an hour and a half of time practicing and running drills on the court with each player putting up shots in the gym on their own time.
This is a drastic change to all the freshman on the team, who in high school didn’t have to put in this much work and at such a high level of competition.
A new addition to the team is CSI graduate Justin Zieris. Zieris, who only a year ago played for the men’s basketball team, has now returned as an assistant coach to help the new players and his former teammates. He is a valuable asset to the team because he can relate to the issues the rookies are facing from being in their shoes recently.
“Coming into an environment like this, where it is so heavily focused on winning, when freshman come in they don’t want to do anything wrong and that can have an effect on a lot of kids,” said Zieris. “They just want to do everything that they can right, so guys tend to be nervous or too careful with the ball when they are playing.”
Zieris constantly tells players that the best thing they can do is be free and play basketball like they have been playing their whole lives, with confidence.
“Even though it is harder on the team right now to have so many young players,” said Zieris. “Down the road this will just make our team better because once they are all seniors they will all be on the same level.”
