But with seven players back, including the top four scorers, and a promising collection of newcomers, coach Billy Donlon is confident this year’s group will restore the program to its usual spot near the top of the league, and that last season will be remembered as an unfortunate blip rather than the begining of a downward trend.
Thursday afternoon following the first team practice of the final summer session, Donlon sat down for a Q&A in which he addressed the state of the program as he heads into his sixth season at the helm.
How long did it take before you watched the film from the UIC tournament game?
There are three games I have never watched. I've never watched the (2013) Valpo championship game, I've never watched the (2014) Milwaukee championship game and I haven't watched the UIC tournament game. And I watch film of every game we play multiple times. I'll go back and I'll watch all of last season again. I haven't watched it and I probably will never watch it unless somebody makes me or a player comes into my office and says, 'Coach, I want to watch that game.' Then of course I would. And some day I will watch the championship games.
You guys have had so much success through the years, so does this offseason have a different feel coming off a down year?
One of the hardest things to do in sports is recover. It’s really hard to recover from a major emotional event. What triggers an emotional event? Something like an injury for a player. It’s really hard for a player to recover from that emotionally. When you have a rough year or one that’s not up to standards, some of the recovery is asking yourself ‘Why did it happen?’ There’s no question injuries were the main reason. But we can’t just assume we’re going to be good because everybody’s healthy. There’s no doubt that this year it’s going to take a great amount of work to get back to where we’ve been.
What are you most looking forward to this offseason in your free time?
I just spent three weeks with my daughter (9-year-old Maren) in June, but she’s in an all-star (baseball) game on Saturday so I’m taking her back to North Carolina. By coaching, I’m very blessed to be able to do my passion, but it does have impact in other areas of your life. I’ll have her again for three weeks in August, and those are the times I most look forward to. I’m also going to take a weekend getaway to Chicago to be with my sister (Heather Vogler), whose husband (Jerry) died about a month ago of ALS. So I’ll spend some time with her.
With how well you play defense, do you think the new rule reducing the shot clock from 35 to 30 seconds is really going to help you?
I don’t know. I can see both sides. We keep comparing the college game to the pro game, and you can’t, for a number of reasons. The most obvious reason is you peak as an offensive player later than you do a defensive player. You’ll pick up your defense quicker for the most part. The games are so different. What will be interesting is there will be more possessions. Will teams press aggressively, will they press to run clock, will it be harder to score because it’s a shorter clock and if you guard someone for 35, why can’t you guard them for 30? I try to look at the law of unintended consequences. Because there will be more possessions, yes, you would think there would be more points. But because there will be more possessions, there also will be more fouls called. So foul trouble will play a greater part in the game.
It will be interesting. They experimented with it in the NIT, and I talked to some coaches who said they did feel like you’re rushed and they did feel it was easier to guard and you could do more things to screw with the offense. We’re going to have to have our answers by September as far as our theories on what we’re going to do moving forward.
What do you expect to be the biggest improvement in the team?
Defense. We were so horrific last year. I think the only thing we did well last year was defend the 3. Our two-point field goal percentage defense was bad, our interior defense was bad.
What is the biggest challenge facing the team?
Everybody adjusting to their new expectation level and having a chip on our shoulder. The thing that sports teaches you is you can go from the penthouse to the outhouse lickety-split. Right now we’ve got to try to get out of the outhouse.
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