Matt Erdman laid it out for his young troops before Wednesday’s practice.
“It’s time to play big-boy basketball,” said Erdman, the interim coach of the Lakehead Thunderwolves men’s team.
The message came after a sloppy 3-5 pre-season from a roster lined with first-year players, the by-product of a team coming off its fourth straight trip to nationals.
Gone are the heart and soul of those teams. What remains are bit parts from those championship-hunting squads, veterans hoping to step up and fill important roles.
Erdman, who said it will take time for the newcomers to gel on the court, is hoping to minimize the growing pains as quickly as possible.
The Wolves head to Queen’s and York on Friday and Saturday to kick off the 2013-14 OUA campaign. While no one is expecting a repeat of the past four years, Erdman wants his team to compete.
“And I think we’ve got the guys willing and able to do it. We’ve got to stay focused and stick with the game plan for 40 minutes. I’m confident in these guys. I know they have confidence in themselves,” Erdman said.
There’s no question this is a team in transition.
Losing any part of last season’s core would have a dramatic effect on this year’s results. Losing two-time CIS defender of the year Greg Carter, the rebounding and scoring skills of Yoosrie Salhia, the outside shooting of Ben Johnson, Joe Hart and Matthew Schmidt and the all-around game of super-sub Joseph Jones will be hard to recover from.
To make matters worse, a knee injury will sideline forward Ryan Thomson for the season and forward Joey Nitychoruk is dealing with an ankle injury and starts the season on the injured list.
Before departing for a sabbatical in the NBA D-League, coach Scott Morrison did his level best to find quality replacements.
He brought in seven-footers Brent Wallace and Andrew McCarthy, 6-foot-7 Srdjan Pejicic, brothers Justin and Josh Bell and Igor Lebov, whose shown skill in the pre-season, collecting a double-double last weekend.
Rookie guard Henry Tan has also shown flashes of brilliance playing alongside returning veteran Dwayne Harvey.
Hamilton native Harvey said it’s time to start playing harder than the team has been in non-conference play.
It’s one thing to learn and lose when the games don’t count. But with points on the line, no team can afford a losing record with the playoffs on the line.
“Pre-season, it means a lot, but this is the time of year when everything counts. All the little things, like boxing out and rebounding and just going to the basket hard, this is where the big boys come out and play right now,” Harvey said, echoing his coach.
Playing a full 40 minutes is the key to success, something he and his teammates must learn to do – and fast.
“We haven’t done that once. Other than that, we’ve got to take care of the ball. We’ve been turning the ball over a lot and we’ve got to play with more heart than we’ve been playing with,” Harvey said.
“Things we’ve been doing well is we’ve been crashing the rebounds, so we need to build off of that. And we need to get out and run because we have some of the fastest guys in the country with me, Jamar (Coke) and Henry Tan.”
The Wolves home opener is scheduled for next Friday at the Thunderdome against the three-time defending champion Carleton Ravens.
