Georgia basketball summer workouts with new leaders

Published 2:23 pm Thursday, July 12, 2018

Tom Crean’s mantra for his team this summer is “start fast, finish strong.”

Crean was hired to be the next head coach for Georgia’s men’s basketball team more than 115 days ago, and there are just more than 120 days until the Bulldogs play their first game of the 2018-19 season. The mantra is for Crean’s players, but it works in reference to his own adjustment to his new team as well.

“It means everything you do, we want to get off to a really good start with it,” Crean said. “We want to build up that endurance and that level of commitment and toughness that it takes to finish something, but you can’t lose sight of how important it is in the middle.”

Right now, Crean and the Bulldogs are in the middle of summer workouts. He has assistant coaches that are new to Georgia in Chad Dollar, Joe Scott and Amir Abdur-Rahim. He also has a team in place that lost only three seniors after last season.

Crean said both coaches and players have made meaningful progress this summer but still have a long way to go in order to meet his expectations. Both groups are in that middle stage of the process, which will ultimately determine how ready the Bulldogs are when their season begins on Nov. 9.

For the players, that preparation includes workouts that are faster and more competitive than they have been in years past, senior Turtle Jackson said. They are learning the fundamentals of the new system while simultaneously building camaraderie through competition with their teammates.

One day, for example, the players went to the Carlton St. parking deck and stood at the base of the steep ramp that leads to the top level. Crean and his staff had players call each other out and race each other to the top of the ramp.

“He wants to see us give 100 percent every day,” Jackson said. “With sprints or running the parking deck, no matter what time it is, he just wants to see us give our best and go hard.”

Jackson admitted junior Jordan Harris won the parking deck competition but was quick to add that he easily beat his roommate, Rayshaun Hammonds.

For the coaches, getting ready for the new season means getting to know each other. They have a combined 80 years of experience between the four of them, however, getting that experience to translate into one vision is important.

“I have a flexibility of listening, learning and paying attention, but at the same time having a strong idea of what we think works,” Crean said. “You keep trying to work to get it together, and all of a sudden you have a program. And that’s what we’re working towards.”

Each coach was new to Georgia at the summer’s start, so each had to learn as much about their peers as they did about the Xs and Os in order to form a stronger and more unified vision.

“When you’re away from your family and [the other coaches] are away from their family, all you have is you,” Dollar said. “We spend so much time together now really getting to know each other even better than we already knew each other. We eat lunch together, we eat dinner together, we wake up at the same hotel, so that transition has been really good.”

As players work on spacing, footwork and techniques while assistants work to all get on the same page before the strong finish, one thing has been constant about Crean’s approach to the new era of Georgia basketball. That constant was introduced in the Bulldogs’ workouts and became synonymous with Crean himself, and Dollar wasted no time in finding the words to describe it.

“Energy, energy, energy,” he said.

Printed with permission from The Red & Black independent student media organization in Athens, Ga.; redandblack.com/sports.