Practice begins as team awaits start of season

The 2010-11 UTEP men's basketball team opened practice on Oct. 15 at the Don Haskins Center under the helm of first-year head coach Tim Floyd.

Floyd, whose first coaching job came as an assistant under the legendary coach that the team's stadium is named after, strode out of the locker room tunnel, eager and ready to begin his first day with the reigning Conference USA regular season champions.

"Like every coach in the country, everybody's excited," Floyd said. "This brings a personal significance to me, just because of the good feeling I had when I walked in here…the place where I spent the first nine years of my career…I got somewhat emotional just walking into the building."

Since the first day, the team has worked mainly on defensive drills and some half-court offense. With less than a week before the Miner's first exhibition game against Eastern New Mexico Oct. 30, and their first non-conference game one week after that, Floyd hopes that the eight seniors returning to the floor for the Miners will ease the team's learning curve.

"Everybody is anxious to get in here. It seems like we just got done playing last year. We have a lot to cover," senior guard Randy Culpepper said. "It's going to be tough with the first game around the corner. We have a lot of stuff to put in."

Culpepper was picked in the pre-season to repeat as C-USA Player of the Year and is one of 50 players on the watch list for the Wooden Award, which is given to the nation's most outstanding college player.

"To be chosen as pre-season Player of the Year and the Wooden Award, all that is great, but it's not an individual sport, it's a team effort," Culpepper said. "So I'm not really worried about living up to that as long as we win ball games."

In addition to the new coaching staff, the Miners are looking to overcome the challenge of filling the void left by departing big men, forwards Derrick Caracter and Arnett Moultrie.

"We're going to have to step it up on the backboard," senior forward Jeremy Williams said. "We were pretty big last year and got a lot of rebounds but we're going to have to be more aggressive on the boards and gang rebound. That includes the guards also, it's not just on the bigs."

Floyd feels that so far, his new team has responded well to his coaching methods. As a Haskins disciple, Floyd is known for having defensively strong teams, and so far, practice has focused on that end of the court. However, Floyd hopes to continue to progress on offense from half-court to full-court.

"They're making mistakes, but they are making them with effort, so we'll live with those," Floyd said. "There are adjustments being made, you can't move forward unless the guys are listening and they're doing that, so as a result we're real pleased with where we are right now."

Currently, most media outlets are predicting the Miners will once again be an NCAA Tournament bubble team, finishing second in C-USA behind Memphis. Williams, who was named to the pre-season All Conference second team, believes that coach Floyd can help them overcome expectations.

"We haven't been going that long and I already learned more than I learned in four years," Williams said. "His methods have us practicing really hard, and I feel like if we can transcend that into games then we'll have another great season, especially on the defensive end."

David Acosta may be reached at prospector@utep.edu.