There may not be two more diametrically opposed people on planet Earth than Allen Iverson and Coach Andrew. That's the conclusion you had to draw from Sunday's practice. Iverson, of course, is a very good basketball player who is more notable for his, "We talkin' about practice, man," meltdown at a press conference. Iverson, it's safe to say, was not a big practice fan.
Compare that to Coach Andrew. Tuesday's two-hour practice featured three stations and a 30-minute scrimmage. Towards the end, the head Mudcat must have remembered that his team had not yet encountered every possible scenario in the practice that they might see in a game. In fact, they had faced just such a situation in Saturday's game. That left him with only one option. With only one hitter remaining in the scrimmage, he alertly barked, "OK, everybody in here around me!" It was not that he had forgotten that JJ still had one more at-bat. It was that he wanted to make sure his team knew what to do in case of a timeout. This could be a key time-saver in a future game, when it will be just as essential as knowing to run through first base or call "Time!" while running at the lead runner.
Just in case fundamentals other than being well-schooled in the art of timeouts also have some relevance to the next game, Sunday's practice also included several other facets. The three stations:
1. Hitting, with the usual tee/soft toss/live pitching rotation. Coach Tom was called in from the bullpen to do the pitching, because his contract demands a certain number of pitching appearances per season.
2. Baserunning/infield, which was designed to put the runners in a game situation at first base and force them to react to a ground ball or fly ball and the way the defense played it. Coach Mike, the master of creative reinforcement, deemed it a five-pushup penalty for fielders to fail to call the ball in the air and a one-lap penalty for runners to fail to slide into second base.
3. An outfield/infield drill designed to encourage outfielders to get the ball to the cutoff man as quickly as possible, and to always have an infielder backing up the cutoff man. If you've read any other entries of this blog at all, you probably know what happened when the infielder got the ball: they ran at the lead runner and yelled, "TIME!" After watching this be reinforced at multiple practices, I have passed this particular tip to Butch Davis. Instead of clearing any more players, the Tar Heels' future strategy will be to wait for the opponent to complete a long pass (this should not take very long), then have the UNC defenders run at them while yelling, "TIME!" Look for it on Saturday in the game against Rutgers and expect a Tar Heel defensive shutout.
After the scrimmage, which was highlighted by a nice grab by Tyler in left field, a quick base relay was held, with the winners receiving one piece of gum each. The practice emphasis for the day was on hustle. Coach Mike and Coach Rob awarded helmet stickers to JJ and Big Ben for being good examples in that category.
The next practice is Wednesday at 5 p.m. at Method Road, when Coach Andrew is expected to ask the team to practice getting a free drink, among other important drills.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment