The Arizona men’s basketball team opened practice for media members to observe. Here are some tidbits from new head coach Sean Miller’s practice:
There were seemingly two main themes from Thursday’s basketball practice, conditioning and fundamentals.
Miller started practice by huddling at half court, telling the team that there were three options for handling practice: the team could get better, get worse or stay where it was. The overall message? Improvement.
To begin drills, the team broke into a red and blue teams to run half-court offensive drills that focused on ball movement, screens and running off those screens properly.
The team ran what Miller called a “”St. Joe’s”” drill, where players would attempt to score 75 buckets in two minutes. Without dribbling, players would sprint down the court while passing to two standing coaches, who would pass the ball back. The players would finish on the other end with a layup.
Quickly transitioning to a “”Phoenix”” drill, players would take a rebound, throw an outlet pass to a guard and run a play on the other end of the court ending with one of the big men finishing at the rim.
At one point in the “”Phoenix”” drill, guard Garland Judkins lost his dribble and the ball rolled out of bounds. Miller was sharp with Judkins afterwards, but quickly started the drill again, showing he will hold players accountable but won’t dwell on their mistakes.