Post by rainman on Oct 19, 2007 17:52:46 GMT -5
Joe Lifter
By John Antonik for MSNsportsNET.com
July 20, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – For the last five years West Virginia’s big men were more like jumbo shrimp, if you know what I mean. But alas Bob Huggins has taken the lock off the weight room door. His instructions to his guys were simple: Don’t come out until you’re bigger.
“To be brutally honest we’re so weak now that we can make dramatic gains,” Huggins told a state-wide radio audience last month.
Joe Alexander, for one, is happy to be lifting if for no other reason than his uniform will fit him a lot better next year. There’s nothing wrong with having a little vanity every once in a while.
“I can remember times last year when I was on the floor and my uniform felt kind of big and I kind of felt like a bum playing against all these big guys,” Alexander said.
This year WVU equipment manager Bubba Schmidt can cross smalls and mediums off his list of things to order. There are no smalls and mediums in Bob Huggins’ basketball program.
“For a long time around the NBA the buzzword was ‘you’ve got to have Cincinnati bodies’ and that was because our guys were physically ready to go into the NBA and play – they didn’t have to bring them in and put them with a trainer and do things to get them physically ready to play,” Huggins said.
To be fair former Mountaineer coach John Beilein operates a system like no other, his modified Princeton style a ballet in a game now infiltrated by mud wrestlers. For Beilein, the sum has always been greater than the parts. Alexander tries to explain.
“When I came out of high school Coach Beilein showed us all this stuff that we had never learned before,” he said. “We worked mostly on techniques for getting open and how to read his screens and work off screens in his offense.”
And Alexander’s three days working with Bob Huggins last spring?
“We did stuff that Coach Beilein had basically been telling us not to do for the last two years which is kind of funny … things like getting up in your man and hounding him basically – being physical,” Alexander said.
Which way is more effective? Huggins and Beilein have both won more than 500 career games so it’s really hard to argue with that kind of success.
Ever since Huggs took the WVU job last April people have been telling Alexander that this was the best thing that could have ever happened to him. Alexander wasn’t sure what to think -- basically because he really didn’t know a whole lot about Bob Huggins before the coach came to West Virginia. Keep in mind, Joe had spent a lot of time in China.
“I think it was either Alex (Ruoff) or Jamie (Smalligan) who told me that this is going to be really good for us. I had no idea,” Alexander said.
“After working out a couple of times with him his style plays out well for me so I’m happy with it but our team is going to be good, too. It wouldn’t be cool if it just helped me and not the team.”
Make no mistake about it, Bob Huggins is going to help Joe Alexander’s basketball career if he does the things Huggins tells him to do. Huggins and his assistant coaches Billy Hahn, Larry Harrison and Erik Martin have a reputation for turning out NBA players like sausages. It’s almost as if they just add water and stir.
Alexander, at 6-foot-8-inches tall and now 230 pounds, has some of those Sidd Finch qualities that are almost too good to be true. The fact that he’s been playing competitive, organized basketball for about five years makes his story even more compelling. Kind of like, well, Sidd Finch on April 2nd.
Alexander says he’s happiest when he’s got a basketball in his hands and an iPod in his ears dribbling and shooting by himself well into the night at the Coliseum.
“I don’t like to go out and party so I’m real bored at night and that’s where I go,” he shrugged. “I just go out and listen to music and work on stuff that I want to get people with later.”
His night-time workouts are as much therapeutic as they are self improvement. “I genuinely enjoy it.”
However, Alexander admits the latter part of last season wasn’t too enjoyable for him personally. He was ecstatic that the team was winning but he had run into a brick wall. It started against Cincinnati in the final regular season game and lasted through West Virginia’s NIT title game triumph over Clemson in New York.
“After (the Cincinnati game) I was real tired. That was really my first season that I’ve played significant minutes against good competition,” Alexander explained. “In high school I did but that’s different.”
Alexander wanted to lift more during the season to keep his strength up but Beilein wanted him to stay away from the weights, rest his body, and maintain his shooting touch.
“Everyone has their own theories about how lifting affects your shot and I think a lot of that is just mental,” Alexander said. “For me personally I’ve always felt that I need to lift in order for my shot to feel good. I just felt during the year because we weren’t lifting that my shot was getting worse.”
To Alexander it was as much physical as it was psychological.
“Right when I started lifting and I got back into the gym my shot felt great again,” he said. “There isn’t anything wrong with it, but Beilein’s philosophy was not to have us lift very hard so we didn’t get tired. For me that just wasn’t very good.”
Two months of hard work in the weight room has already made Joe Alexander a different looking player. He also believes it will make him a different player altogether.
“Right now I’m doing things that I needed to be doing last year but there was no way I could have done them weighing 205 pounds,” he said.
Alexander elaborates.
“When I drive to the basket now I can absorb contact from big guys whereas last year when a guy would hit me whatever play I was trying to create was over,” Alexander said. “Now it’s really different because I’m stronger than the guy I’m playing with and I weigh as much or I out-weigh him.”
Alexander and the rest of his West Virginia teammates got a big boost of self-confidence earlier this month playing summer league basketball in Pittsburgh with other college players – including those big bullies from Oakland.
The Pitt Panthers -- their grabbing, bumping, pushing and holding -- were usually kryptonite to Beilein’s West Virginia teams. Alexander recalls walking into the gym and seeing some of the Pitt players looking surprised at how ripped up those once malnourished Mountaineer players had become.
“I remember hearing a couple of them saying stuff about, ‘Oh, we’ve been in the weight room, too.’ I know they could tell because we all look bigger,” Alexander said.
They’re bigger, but probably not big enough for Bob Huggins. Of course the lock is still off the weight room door.
By John Antonik for MSNsportsNET.com
July 20, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – For the last five years West Virginia’s big men were more like jumbo shrimp, if you know what I mean. But alas Bob Huggins has taken the lock off the weight room door. His instructions to his guys were simple: Don’t come out until you’re bigger.
“To be brutally honest we’re so weak now that we can make dramatic gains,” Huggins told a state-wide radio audience last month.
Joe Alexander, for one, is happy to be lifting if for no other reason than his uniform will fit him a lot better next year. There’s nothing wrong with having a little vanity every once in a while.
“I can remember times last year when I was on the floor and my uniform felt kind of big and I kind of felt like a bum playing against all these big guys,” Alexander said.
This year WVU equipment manager Bubba Schmidt can cross smalls and mediums off his list of things to order. There are no smalls and mediums in Bob Huggins’ basketball program.
“For a long time around the NBA the buzzword was ‘you’ve got to have Cincinnati bodies’ and that was because our guys were physically ready to go into the NBA and play – they didn’t have to bring them in and put them with a trainer and do things to get them physically ready to play,” Huggins said.
To be fair former Mountaineer coach John Beilein operates a system like no other, his modified Princeton style a ballet in a game now infiltrated by mud wrestlers. For Beilein, the sum has always been greater than the parts. Alexander tries to explain.
“When I came out of high school Coach Beilein showed us all this stuff that we had never learned before,” he said. “We worked mostly on techniques for getting open and how to read his screens and work off screens in his offense.”
And Alexander’s three days working with Bob Huggins last spring?
“We did stuff that Coach Beilein had basically been telling us not to do for the last two years which is kind of funny … things like getting up in your man and hounding him basically – being physical,” Alexander said.
Which way is more effective? Huggins and Beilein have both won more than 500 career games so it’s really hard to argue with that kind of success.
Ever since Huggs took the WVU job last April people have been telling Alexander that this was the best thing that could have ever happened to him. Alexander wasn’t sure what to think -- basically because he really didn’t know a whole lot about Bob Huggins before the coach came to West Virginia. Keep in mind, Joe had spent a lot of time in China.
“I think it was either Alex (Ruoff) or Jamie (Smalligan) who told me that this is going to be really good for us. I had no idea,” Alexander said.
“After working out a couple of times with him his style plays out well for me so I’m happy with it but our team is going to be good, too. It wouldn’t be cool if it just helped me and not the team.”
Make no mistake about it, Bob Huggins is going to help Joe Alexander’s basketball career if he does the things Huggins tells him to do. Huggins and his assistant coaches Billy Hahn, Larry Harrison and Erik Martin have a reputation for turning out NBA players like sausages. It’s almost as if they just add water and stir.
Alexander, at 6-foot-8-inches tall and now 230 pounds, has some of those Sidd Finch qualities that are almost too good to be true. The fact that he’s been playing competitive, organized basketball for about five years makes his story even more compelling. Kind of like, well, Sidd Finch on April 2nd.
Alexander says he’s happiest when he’s got a basketball in his hands and an iPod in his ears dribbling and shooting by himself well into the night at the Coliseum.
“I don’t like to go out and party so I’m real bored at night and that’s where I go,” he shrugged. “I just go out and listen to music and work on stuff that I want to get people with later.”
His night-time workouts are as much therapeutic as they are self improvement. “I genuinely enjoy it.”
However, Alexander admits the latter part of last season wasn’t too enjoyable for him personally. He was ecstatic that the team was winning but he had run into a brick wall. It started against Cincinnati in the final regular season game and lasted through West Virginia’s NIT title game triumph over Clemson in New York.
“After (the Cincinnati game) I was real tired. That was really my first season that I’ve played significant minutes against good competition,” Alexander explained. “In high school I did but that’s different.”
Alexander wanted to lift more during the season to keep his strength up but Beilein wanted him to stay away from the weights, rest his body, and maintain his shooting touch.
“Everyone has their own theories about how lifting affects your shot and I think a lot of that is just mental,” Alexander said. “For me personally I’ve always felt that I need to lift in order for my shot to feel good. I just felt during the year because we weren’t lifting that my shot was getting worse.”
To Alexander it was as much physical as it was psychological.
“Right when I started lifting and I got back into the gym my shot felt great again,” he said. “There isn’t anything wrong with it, but Beilein’s philosophy was not to have us lift very hard so we didn’t get tired. For me that just wasn’t very good.”
Two months of hard work in the weight room has already made Joe Alexander a different looking player. He also believes it will make him a different player altogether.
“Right now I’m doing things that I needed to be doing last year but there was no way I could have done them weighing 205 pounds,” he said.
Alexander elaborates.
“When I drive to the basket now I can absorb contact from big guys whereas last year when a guy would hit me whatever play I was trying to create was over,” Alexander said. “Now it’s really different because I’m stronger than the guy I’m playing with and I weigh as much or I out-weigh him.”
Alexander and the rest of his West Virginia teammates got a big boost of self-confidence earlier this month playing summer league basketball in Pittsburgh with other college players – including those big bullies from Oakland.
The Pitt Panthers -- their grabbing, bumping, pushing and holding -- were usually kryptonite to Beilein’s West Virginia teams. Alexander recalls walking into the gym and seeing some of the Pitt players looking surprised at how ripped up those once malnourished Mountaineer players had become.
“I remember hearing a couple of them saying stuff about, ‘Oh, we’ve been in the weight room, too.’ I know they could tell because we all look bigger,” Alexander said.
They’re bigger, but probably not big enough for Bob Huggins. Of course the lock is still off the weight room door.
