Syracuse, N.Y. -- Boeheim’s Army players are beginning to trickle into town to start practice for their The Basketball Tournament game scheduled for noon Saturday on ESPN.
New Boeheim’s Army head coach Jeremy Pope put five guys through a workout Monday morning at Liverpool High School. The group (Eric Devendorf, Malachi Richardson, C.J. Fair, Andrew White and Tyrese Rice) was coming back Monday night for a second practice.
Pope, an assistant basketball coach at the University of Portland, huddled up his players before Monday’s workout to lay out his expectations. Mostly, he wanted them to understand that just because plenty of people are picking Boeheim’s Army as a TBT favorite this summer, that designation should not impact the way the team approaches games in the single-elimination quest to win $1 million.
“For our team,” he said, “it’s understanding that we want to share the ball, we want to share it fast and the guy you’re throwing it to is a really good player as well. So what you might be trying to accomplish on your own, it can be accomplished, but you don’t have to be the main conduit of getting it accomplished. It was basically setting the foundation for what these hopefully next two weeks are going to look like.”
Pope said he appreciated everyone’s “willingness to learn” Monday, despite the long professional track record of some guys. He wants them to communicate, discover each other’s basketball tendencies, “just get used to playing the way we want to play.”
He will not insert a bunch of plays for them to learn. He wants the games to flow as freely as possible, with guys making reads off other guys to determine what comes next on the court.
“We will have a couple of plays,” he said, “but my intention is to play conceptually. I love randomness. You can’t really scout randomness and that’s what we’re going with.”
The Boeheim’s Army schedule in Peoria right now looks like this: noon Saturday vs. Forces of Seoul. The winner of that game plays at 7 p.m. Monday (ESPN3). The winner of that game plays at 7 p.m. Wednesday (ESPN2). TBT could change the Monday and Wednesday game times and TV schedules.
Andrew White could win $33,333 all by himself: TBT is holding a 3-point shooting contest that starts with each team designating a 3-point shooter from the squad to compete in a bracket-style, one-on-one shooting faceoff.
Andrew White is the Boeheim’s Army representative. He will square off with a 3-point shooter from Forces of Seoul on Friday, a day before the teams’ Saturday game. The rules are pretty simple: The first player to make 11 shots from the 3-point line wins.
“Outside of just making every shot,” White said, “if you do miss one, you gotta put some arc on it so that you get a good miss. If that ball pops out to the corner or something like that, that could cost you.”
The competition begins with the two shooters back-to-back at halfcourt. They then dribble toward their own basket and start launching 3s. Each shooter has a designated rebounder.
“I dribble from half and I have to shoot a pull-up 3 and then it’s catch and shoot from then on out,” White said.
White can advance in the 3-point shooting competition regardless of what his team does. The two finalists shoot it out live on ESPN at 2 p.m. Aug. 1.
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MORE BOEHEIM’S ARMY
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