Many college basketball coaches start or conclude practices by positioning their players on the end line for full-court “suicide” sprints.
Not first-year Kansas University coach Bill Self.
“I don’t like running sprints,” Self said. “My personal opinion is when you run sprints at the end of practice, guys save themselves for the sprints. I’d rather condition with the ball.
“We do them maybe for punishment during practice every now and then,” added Self, who did use suicide sprints as part of his two-week preseason conditioning program called “Boot Camp.”
“For the most part, I tell our guys, ‘We’re not running sprints at the end of practice, so you don’t have to pace yourself.’ Guys go harder if they think they don’t have to save anything in the tank.”
Last year, the Jayhawks ran sprints every day at practice.
“If you took care of business with coach (Roy) Williams, you didn’t have to run too much,” junior forward Wayne Simien said. “We had winners and losers. If you lost, you had to pay for it (by running sprints).”
Junior Michael Lee said he had “never liked running sprints. As long as you get everything out of your players in practice I don’t think it’s necessary. Every coach has a different philosophy. Some coaches may not feel a need to do them. We do not have to run them as much this year.”
Self said his players — who practice full-octane for two or more hours a day — were in good physical condition with the exhibition opener approaching.
KU will meet EA Sports All-Stars at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Allen Fieldhouse.
“We are not in game shape, yet we are gaining on it,” Self said. “We are about where we need to be conditioningwise.”
“We’ll be gone a month,” said Boschee, who lives in Lawrence.
“My agent set this up for me. I didn’t have to go to tryouts. The guy coaching the team is a big name in France. He brought three players from the Nike Elite team over with him to France last year. I am hoping something like that will work out for me.”
“I’ve been working out every day, running or lifting,” added Boschee, who wants to try pro basketball before becoming a coach like his brother, Mike, who is head coach at Central College in Pella, Iowa.
“I feel it’s pretty much night and day,” Simien said. “Some of the principles are the same, but there is different terminology and what not. It’s taken some time, but I think we are improving and catching on more every day.”
The Jayhawks held a players-only meeting after practice Tuesday.
“We just had to discuss things we felt were important to the team going into the season,” Lee said. “We’ve got a game in a week. Team morale is good. Everybody is getting along. Everything is good.”
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