The march to March begins for the Racers
MBB: Murray State held their first official practice of the preseason on Monday
We may be three months away from Christmas, but the first official practice of the college basketball season might as well be Christmas for Murray State’s 15 new players.
“It feels like a holiday,” Murray State senior forward Fred King said. “Everybody's excited to get to work and finally start chipping away to get ready for our first game.”
First-year Murray State Head Coach Ryan Miller has 40 days to hold 30 preseason practices on the way to the season-opener, November 3rd, against Omaha. Six weeks may seem like a long time before the first game of the season, but Miller knows that time will evaporate quickly.
“The days are coming fast,” Miller said. “The practices are going to be a little longer, the practices are going to be a little more intense, and we're going to have to get a lot done in a short amount of time.”'
One of the biggest tasks the coaching staff will need to complete before the season starts is figuring out who will get time in Miller’s rotation. This Racer roster appears to be one of the deepest Murray State teams in recent memory, which means the decisions on how the playing time will be divided up will be difficult.
“We have a bunch of good players,” Miller said. “The margins of who we play, when we play them and who we start are very, very small. To be able to go through this process and be able to see situations and stuff like that, where we can kind of finalize rotations, which is going to be very, very difficult for us, because we’ve got all good players, we’ve got all good kids. I want to get to ten or 11 guys playing, so we have to figure that out as we go down the stretch.”
As he prepares for his first season as a head coach, Miller got a head start on getting his team ready for November 3rd. Before the Racers went to The Bahamas for their exhibition tour last month, they were able to hold ten practices they otherwise wouldn’t have had. That extra work has been extremely beneficial for the cohesiveness of this roster.
“We were at Vanderbilt, practicing down there this past weekend,” Miller said. “I talked to their head coach a little bit, and we're a little ahead of where we probably should be. He was kind of wowed how far we are down the line. It was important to me to have those ten extra practices, setting the foundation and culture of our program, (for) both the players and the staff, being able to know what the standard is and the championship standard that we're trying to accomplish here.”
Before the Racers open the season November 3rd, they’ll play a pair of exhibition games — at Xavier on October 18th, and at home against Northern State on October 26th.