Driving
the Lane
A Behind-the-Bumper
Look at the Blazers
on the Road
By Stanley Holditch
Road trip. Those two words send thrills through college students and chills down the spines of college basketball coaches. For the UAB men’s basketball team and new head coach Mike Davis, 2006-2007 was the season of the road trip. Davis found himself looking at a schedule that required the Blazers to play 18 of 31 games away from home—in other words, a killer lineup for a young, rebuilding team.
 In one four-day stretch in mid-January, the Blazers took on two Conference USA rivals in back-to-back road trips—and UAB Magazine went along for the ride.
Thursday, January 11, 2:30 p.m.: Bartow Arena
The road trip begins with a tune-up at home. Assistant coaches Donnie Marsh and Tracy Dildy work with most of the team on continuity drills, while assistant coach Kerry Rupp does individual work with freshman forward Jeremy Mayfield and junior guard Paul Delaney III. The practice lasts about 45 minutes and is followed by an exhaustive film session covering the closing minutes of the previous night’s win over the University of Central Florida. Davis deems these the most important minutes of the game, and he breaks them down play by play, possession by possession, until every aspect of the team’s success has been thoroughly analyzed. The room is quiet and contemplative, the studious atmosphere broken only briefly by a joke from freshman guard Taurus Dortch. “I just want to make sure that we play that way all the time,” Davis says. “Once a team figures out why they win games, it’s much easier for them to go out every night and compete.”
Friday, 11:00 p.m.: Arrive in New Orleans
The team arrives at the New Orleans Marriott late for a Saturday game against Tulane, and the coaches and players go straight to bed; they’ll get an early start tomorrow.
Saturday, 8:00 a.m.: Shootaround
Gameday. The Blazers conduct an energetic shootaround at Fogelman Arena, running drills and going over set plays and opponent tendencies. Rupp instructs the players on proper techniques for moving quickly to a spot and sliding past opposing defenders. Dildy breaks down Tulane’s diamond formation—an inbounds pass that is effective against the full-court press, one of the defenses in the Blazers’ arsenal.
Saturday, 9:40 a.m.: Film Session
The Blazers return to their hotel to analyze more film. Dildy dissects the play of each member of the opposing squad, from captain Andrew Garcia to bench players who only see five to seven minutes per game. Senior guard/forward Wen Mukubu takes a seat right up front and pays unwavering attention to his coach, setting an example for the rest of the team.
Road Warriors
A look back at some of the Blazers’ notable individual performances on the road:
2/25/06: Marvette McDonald scores 39 points at SMU to help the Blazers to a 73-68 win. McDonald hits eight three-pointers and goes 12 for 21 from the field, while adding four rebounds and an assist.
12/06/03: Mo Finley scores 38 points at ninth-ranked Mississippi State on 15 for 21 shooting, with five three-pointers. UAB narrowly loses the contest 86-84.
11/17/01: P.J. Arnold grabs 22 rebounds against Eastern Michigan at the Paradise Jam in the Virgin Islands in a 79-66 UAB win.
12/30/95: Carlos Williams scores 36 points at Hawaii-Hilo to lead the Blazers to an 87-74 win. |
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Saturday, 10:10 a.m.: Pregame Meal
A breakfast of fruit, bread, and assorted meats fuels the team for the upcoming contest. “A team meal should be a pretty good balance of protein and carbs, all low-fat,” says Eddie McCarter, director of basketball operations, who takes care of travel and meal arrangements when the Blazers are on the road. “You don’t want anything heavy or fried.” As players finish, they trickle out of the room to enjoy a small bit of downtime before heading back to Fogelman Arena for the game.
Saturday, 12:53 p.m.: Arrive at Arena
Hip-hop music booms through the speakers as the teams get in some last-minute drills before heading to the locker rooms. Blazers fans arrive as well, forming a very vocal minority.
Saturday, 2:00 p.m.: Tip Off
The Blazers get off to a slow start and quickly find themselves down 7-3. The defense looks lackadaisical early, but five minutes into the first half, junior forward Frank Holmes energizes the team with two consecutive blocks on one possession. Wen Mukubu makes a nice pass to sophomore forward Lawrence Kinnard for an easy dunk, which brings UAB to within a point of the Green Wave. It is apparent that Kinnard is in for a big night; he hits his second three-pointer of the game just a minute into the second half en route to a career-high 25 points. Joining him on the floor is Jeremy Mayfield, a highly recruited forward who has been held out of the first half because of missing class earlier in the week. Davis is proud of his reputation as a disciplinarian. “I want these guys to understand that they need to treat the classroom and their professors the same way that they treat the basketball court,” he says.
Saturday, 4:30 p.m.: Game Over
Both Kinnard and Delaney have huge statistical games in the 67-60 Blazers win, but the real victory was the effort that UAB displayed for the full 40 minutes, a goal stressed and re-stressed by the coaching staff since the end of the UCF contest. During his postgame radio interview, Davis is besieged by UAB fans shouting, “Whose house? Green house!” All smiles, the team piles back on the bus for the five-hour ride back to Birmingham.
Monday, 5:43 p.m.: Arrive in Memphis
After a day of rest and a morning practice in Birmingham, the Blazers arrive at the Memphis Marriott to prepare for a heavily anticipated duel with the highly ranked Tigers of the University of Memphis. The team is soon off to see the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies play at FedEx Forum, the site of their own game tomorrow night.
Tuesday, 12:30 p.m.: Film Session
After a rare relaxed morning, the team gathers for a scouting and film session on the Memphis Tigers, at the time ranked 17th or 18th in the country, depending on the poll. Marsh hands out scouting reports that begin with a motivational message he wrote himself. He has a talent for the written word and uses this to appeal to his players’ sense of pride and responsibility in representing UAB and themselves on the court. After each Memphis player is analyzed in depth, all set plays, inbound plays, and defensive sets are reviewed exhaustively. Soon, a chink in Memphis’s armor appears: Their propensity to drive to the basket makes them vulnerable to offensive fouls. Many of their biggest scorers are slashers rather than jump-shooters, and Marsh explains how the Blazers can take advantage of that playing style.
 Tuesday, 2:00 p.m.: Shootaround
If the players have any nerves about this nationally televised game, they don’t show it on the bus ride to the shootaround. The Forum is huge compared to UAB’s Bartow Arena and dwarfs Tulane’s Fogelman Arena. Former UAB greats Daryl Braden and Larry Spicer are in attendance to provide the team with moral support and meet the new head coach. Marsh runs a series of intense drills to simulate the Memphis sets the Blazers have just studied.
“Memphis is by far the most talented team in Conference USA, and John Calipari has done a wonderful job putting the talent together, but they also play hard, and they play with passion,” Davis says. “Talent doesn’t win games. It helps you, but to win you have to play with passion and know what the purpose is. We should play the same way no matter who we face. That’s a sign of a well-coached team, of a great team.”
Tuesday, 8:00 p.m.: Tip Off
UAB comes on the court to a chorus of boos, feeling the full brunt of the near-sellout crowd. The game starts with sharp play from the Blazers, who take an early 11-7 lead. But after eight and a half minutes of play, the score is tied at 17, and the Blazers never regain the lead. Over the next four minutes, the Tigers score 12 unanswered points to jump out to a 29-17 advantage, and they coast into halftime up by 16.
Throughout the game, UAB coaches and players are hounded by a loud yet humorous heckler, Robert Byrd, a local banker and Memphis booster. Despite this distraction Davis never loses his cool, even joking back with Byrd on several occasions. The players take note and keep their composure, even as the team slides to a disappointing 79-54 loss.
Tuesday, 10:00 p.m.: Game Over
The Forum empties, and quiet settles along with the reality of the loss. The radio crew of Blazer basketball legend Steve Mitchell and play-by-play announcer Cory Prevus joke that they are glad they won’t be riding home on the team bus. They know what to expect after a tough loss: film session the whole way home.
The rest of the 2006-2007 campaign is disappointing for the Blazers, who end up finishing 15-16. But Davis is already making good on his reputation as an ace recruiter—in the off-season, he will attract two top junior-college prospects and three promising freshmen to UAB. The coaching staff also will get a fresh look, as coaches Rupp and Dildy move on after the season—Rupp to a head coaching job and Dildy to an assistant job at his alma mater.
Davis has said that the recruiting class heading into the 2007-2008 season, which includes three transfer students who were ineligible last year, could be the best in UAB basketball history. In fact, the Web site Collegehoopsupdate.com has ranked UAB’s incoming class ninth in the country, ahead of basketball stalwarts such as Duke, Georgetown, and even Memphis. “When you mesh the newcomers with the guys we have coming back,” says Davis, “I think fans, coaches, and players alike have a reason to be excited.”
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