walk-on ramblings
So I woke up veeeerrry early yesterday and went to walk-on tryouts at Gallagher-Iba. Wrote about it for yesterday’s paper, but here’s a little more of what went on.
Now, a quick disclaimer: I have a huge soft spot for walk-ons. I just think it means so much to those guys, it’s cool to see how much they care about it and how they work really hard more for the love of the game than anything else.
OK, so now we have that established. Moving on to Wednesday morning, well before sunrise. I walk into the big gym expecting to see tryouts going on, but what I happen upon is OSU’s regular basketball practice, with all the coaches in attendance. I’m a little baffled. So I stay and watch for a few minutes before heading to the auxiliary gym where the walk-ons are having at it. I have to say, I enjoy watching these practices. Travis Ford is strictly business and things move at a pace that borders on frantic. The guys seem to live a little bit in fear of messing up, and it keeps them on their toes.
So then I head over to tryouts. What’s going there is basically the Colvin Center transplanted, a bunch of pickup games without rhyme or reason. Just when someone starts to look decent, he makes a ridiculous error. There’s very little defense. The turnovers are ridiculous. Big guys only get the ball when they rebound; there is no such thing as feeding the post. To be fair, they don’t look all that different from some of the sloppier pickup games the Cowboys play over the summer. Director of operations Joey Biggs is making cuts and dividing up the teams, and after two hours he sends the best 14 or so over to the big gym, where the actual staff watches for no more than 10 minutes. Ford talks to the group, basically warning them that it’s hard work and they’re not going to play. He is not a sugar-coater, this Travis Ford. Four or five guys are asked to write down their info, and that’s that.
A few highlights from our chat with Ford afterward.
1. We ask if he watches reality TV/felt like he was running a show. He mentions that Bob Knight had a show like that (it was on ESPN two years ago). I tell him that Knight actually brought that kid to media day last year. His response: “Really? That’s great. I won’t be doing that.”
2. When asked how many guys he actually has at this point Ford laughed and said “I can’t keep track at this point.” Brad Garrett is injured so he’s not playing at the moment (although Garrett indicated that he hopes to be back before the season starts) and Akol’s eligibility is unclear. So Ford has had 11 players practicing this week. Thus the need for some walk-ons.
3. At the moment OSU has as many basketball recruits as football recruits for ’09 at five apiece. That’s a pretty crazy number for basketball, but they have a lot of spots to fill in ’09. What’s interesting is that assistant coaches indicated they’re not done yet. That would seem to mean the staff thinks at least two current guys won’t be around next fall.
-andrea cohen
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