Racers ready for first exhibition games
MBB: Murray State will play three games in three days in The Bahamas
After two months of summer workouts, and ten extra practices in preparation for their exhibition tour of The Bahamas, Murray State Head Coach Ryan Miller says he’s excited to see a first draft of his team in action starting on Monday.
“(It’s an) unbelievable opportunity we have,” Miller said. “Getting the job just over 100 days ago, we're starting the downhill slide to the start of the season. To be able to have these extra practices, but (also) spending time together. We have 14 new staff members, 15 new players. Just being able to spend that time together and build that bond and chemistry is very, very important to what we do and what we try to accomplish this upcoming season.”
The Racers will play three exhibition games in The Bahamas this week, starting with Monday’s game against the University of Calgary. It may be an exhibition, but Miller is attacking the preparation as if the game matters more than anything.
“We just got out of a staff meeting right now, basically going how we want this baby to look,” Miller said Thursday before the team left for The Bahamas. “We're preparing for Calgary like we were playing Omaha on November 3rd. So with everyone, there's no question with our staff or players of what the amount of prep we're doing for opponents and how it looks like when we're preparing for scouting reports and preparing for teams. Calgary is going to be a pretty good team. They have a history of winning basketball, so they'll be a challenge for us that first game.”
The one thing to not take too seriously this week is the starting lineups and the different combinations of players Miller will use together. This is essentially a three-day science experiment that the first-year head coach is looking forward to.
“It's going to be a challenge for us and our staff,” Miller said. “We’ve got 15 really good basketball players, so defining roles is going to be a challenge for us, and we're doing that every day this summer and through the Bahamas trip. We'll tinker with lineups. We'll play different people at different positions, and all over the place, just to see what we’ve got, and throw a little adversity out there and see how our guys handle it and how our staff handles it.”
One of the parts of building a culture for Miller and his new staff is learning about life on the road. Over the course of the season, the team will spend countless nights in countless hotels, which provides its own unique challenges. This dry run in The Bahamas is allowing everybody in the program to try to get around the learning curve together.
“It's just an awesome learning process for our staff, for our players, just what it looks like when we go on the road,” Miller said. “We’ve got a lot of young staff members that haven't coached a lot at bigger schools, so it's just what it looks like, our travel, how we get on and off the bus — simple things like that. When you're moving 30-plus people, there's a lot that goes into it, right? So getting everybody understanding, whether it's the coaches or the players, their roles, not only their roles on and off the court, but the roles when you travel, and what a travel party looks like. When you're moving 30-plus people with a bunch of baggage and luggage and medical stuff and scout specific stuff, it takes an army, it takes a village. That they're getting those roles developed now is big time, because we don't want to have those roles developed in October when we go play Xavier in an exhibition game. We want them developed now, and having that opportunity to do that now is huge.”
Winning three games in the next three days is of the utmost importance for Miller and the Racers, but there are plenty of intangibles that Miller is emphasizing this week.
“Just building our culture, defining our culture, defining our championship culture, and that's every day, through work and practice,” Miller said. “Really defining our non-negotiables and things we're trying to do. We're trying to be a fast-paced offensive basketball team. We're trying to be a very unselfish basketball team, both offensively and defensively, and we're trying to be a tough, gritty, both mental and physical, team. It takes work, and it takes people getting out of their comfort zones, whether it's staff or players. We want to build this championship culture. It takes a lot of effort, and it takes doing things that are uncommon, and that's what we plan to do.”
Murray State’s game with the University of Calgary on Monday will be streamed on YouTube at 10:00am CDT. You can watch it here.