By Bryan Bloodworth
NORMAL – Illinois State’s men’s basketball team begins play Sunday when it faces CB Alcobendas, a Spanish professional all-star team, in its first of four exhibition games.
The Redbirds, who departed Friday on the 10-day trip and toured Madrid on Saturday, will play a second game Tuesday in Madrid before heading to Barcelona for games Thursday and Saturday.
“I think our guys are really excited about the trip,” said ISU coach Dan Muller, who put the team through 10 practices prior to the trip. “I love what I saw. We’ve had great attitudes. We had really good energy and intensity in practice.
“We certainly made progress with some offensive execution and putting our defense in. But the most important thing for the summer was just the attitude and effort of our guys and the togetherness that we’ve shown.”
Muller wants the Redbirds to work on its new, even faster, up-tempo offense.
“I do hope and think we’ll be faster and more up-tempo,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to play fast, but you have to be committed to it. Players always say they want to play fast until they have to run hard every time. And you have to be a good rebounding team.
“Our offense will be just a little more open with some spacing and guys having an opportunity to penetrate and post just because our personnel is different than last year and we have some long and big wings. There are some big differences offensively that we’re still working on, but I think, to people, it will be obvious that we do look different.”
The Redbirds also will work on tweaking their defense.
“Obviously, you win championships with defense and consistency,” Muller continued. “Because of our speed I think we’ll be O.K. with that. The shot clock change to 30 seconds is going to have every team making small changes. I do think it fits in with how we want to play with a little bit of press and maybe some zone. I think you’ll see some changes on both ends.”
All 14 players on the ISU roster will see action on the trip, according to Muller.
“It’s early (to talk about rotations), but everyone will play on the trip,” added Muller. “Some guys will play more than others. We’re going to have 10 or 11 guys, who deserve to play, but that doesn’t mean they’ll all get to play. Figuring that out is going to be an important part of the equation.”
Bryan Bloodworth can be reached at [email protected]
