September an important month for Dayton men’s, women’s basketball teams

For the Dayton men’s basketball team and the women’s team, September is an important time for development. It’s the in-between time. The summer practice period ended in the final days of July or early August. Preseason practices begin in late September or the first days of October.

However, the work doesn’t stop. The teams can spend up to four hours on the court and four hours working together off the court every week until the preseason practices begin six weeks before their first games. Then they can hold 30 practices in a 42-day period.

Speaking in their offices on Tuesday, the Dayton coaches talked about how they handle this time:

“We only get a limited amount of time to work with them, right,” Dayton men’s coach Anthony Grant said. “So in the summer, it’s a lot of time in the weight room, conditioning. You try to introduce them, depending on the team you have, to what you feel like they need from a basketball standpoint, whether it’s schoolwork or team stuff. You try to balance that along with getting them accustomed to the academic schedule, tutors and stuff like that. You get that base. Then to me September is based on the team you have. It changes every year. This year, we’ve got a brand new team. You try to take advantage of what you did in the summer and kind of build off of that.”

This September has been much different for Grant and his team than last September.

“The year before, with COVID, that summer was lost,” Grant said. “You really couldn’t build off of anything. Then the first month, we got in school in mid-August and we lost another month. So now you’ve got October here where you haven’t been able to really build any continuity. Last year was a challenge for most of college basketball, most of college sports, to deal with — just not being able to have that consistency, accountability.

“So this August and September now, you can develop continuity as you approach the start of official practice. I think that’s probably the biggest thing for me. Going through COVID and not having that, you kind of take it for granted when it’s there. Now you see, especially with this younger team we have, i’s needed to kind of help them understand, ‘Here’s what I need to be able to do, so I can have success and our team can have success.’”

Women’s coach Shauna Green can take a different approach than Grant this month and throughout the preseason because she has a veteran team. The men’s team has seven newcomers among its 13 scholarship players and one player, Elijah Weaver, entering his fourth season of college basketball. The women’s team returns its entire starting lineup, including three sixth-year players: Jenna Giacone; Erin Whalen; and Araion Bradshaw.

“I think this is kind of where we really lock in and ramp up our conditioning,” Green said. “We’re starting to implement the offense, starting to implement the defense. The summer’s really a lot of skill work, fundamentals, trying to get them to where we need to be individually. Now’s the time where it’s all starting to be put together as a team.

“We’re breaking it up right now. We’re still doing an hour of individual work and then we’re doing three hours of of teamwork. I think (Grant’s) probably worried about other things than I’m worried about. We’re still worried about the little things and we’re still big time on the fundamentals and all of that, but we can advance a little bit quicker just because they know what we’re doing. Putting in our offense, putting in our plays doesn’t take as long as it did even last year when we had five freshmen. Everything just can’t move a little bit quicker. It’s definitely different year to year if you’re a veteran team or a young team.”