From the Bleachers: A Night with Cy
By Craig Turner
Published: July 17, 2012

Here is a concise wrap-up of new Head Basketball Coach Cy Alexander’s first real full-length face-to-face meeting with the Greensboro Chapter of the AAF about A&T basketball, his new team, his goals, and his approach to the game.

First let’s just say that Cy is honest in his statements, sometimes brutally so. He made no bones or apologizes about actively seeking this job once it became apparent to most people that Jerry Eaves was on his way out.

He readily stated that he watched every game that A&T played last year and has been watching film non-stop in order to figure out why last year’s team went 6-2 in January and 2-8 in February and kept going home after the first round of the MEAC tournament so many years.

The Problems:

He pointed out several deficiencies that he pinpointed among the top four 1) lack of physical and mental toughness (2) wrong side of the turnover to assist ratio (3) weak rebounding and (4) poor free throw shooting especially in the second half.

He hammered on several telling points for the sub par performance but the big four were:

  • that we gave up 70 points per game while averaging 69 making many of the losses preventable.
  • that we shot just 65 percent of free throws on average during the last eight minutes of every game we played
  • that we were out rebounded by an average of ten boards per night.
  • that our turnover to assist ratio was 3-1 on the wrong side because of bad decision-making and poor shot selection by our guards.

He pointed out there was no consistency at point guard, far too much individual play and the jacking up of three’s at first glance. He vowed that these things would stop one way of the other.

The Solutions:

Cy’s observation is that not all players will be treated equal. To paraphrase a quote from him – “The worst thing you can do is to treat unequal people equal when they are clearly unequal.” In other words, only the best will play and he has told each of his players that they must step up and bring their “A” game if they plan on playing.

“I’m not going to be playing everyone like Jerry. If you’re not in my top eight or nine then you’ll just be assistant coaches.” (on the bench)

Alexander stated that college basketball is a business and he had been given clear marching orders from both Dr. Martin and AD Earl Hilton (1) graduate his players (1A) win. That’s it. Just two objectives. His goals this year – The classroom, finish in the top three and make the big dance.

The Team:

A&T returns seven seniors and all of his team has been in the first session of summer school, the second, or both. All the players will have to make the grade to be on this year’s squad. It’s too early to tell who or what but everyone will get their shot and he’ll know by late October who his starters will be.

Everyone is good shape academically and he has been pleased with the summer workouts. The NCAA has relaxed the rules this year so that basketball coaches can now work with individual players two hours per week during the summer so Alexander and his staff have been working with people non-stop since the beginning of the summer.

He remarked about the general improvement of several senior players including 6-8 Austin Witter, 6-7 Demetrius Upchurch, and guards Jeremy Underwood. RJ Buck, and Lawrence Smith.
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He’s been very pleased with underclassman 6-6 SF Adrian Powell (Jr.), and the development of Cristian Henry (R-Jr.) into a low post player at 6-8 and the rapid improvement of R-Fr. Jacob Carter (6-10, 210), from Goose Creek, S.C. who worked extremely hard on his strength conditioning and adding on some muscle. He seemed genuinely impressed by those three in their summer workouts. Alexander is expecting young guys like Corvon Butler (6-6), Bruce Beckford(6-7), and 6-7 Wayland Siverand to give him some immediate help inside and provide more rebounding off the offensive glass.

He feels he needs to find a true point guard from among the new guys to play the game as he sees it as a coach and not improvise. He is also looking for a guard who can hit shots off the dribble. He’s going to be giving special looks at freshmen Khalid King, Shaun Stewart and 6-3 JUCO transfer Lamont Middleton who plays a more pure two-spot.

Underwood is in the group as well but you could tell there is some concern in Alexander’s voice about his decision-making. He has been impressed with 6-4 senior Jean Louisme’s dramatic improvement as a shooter and his overall game as a two guard versus him trying to play mostly a small wing forward as Eaves did with him last year.

A big shot in the arm could come any day if Old Dominion transfer Josh Hicks, formerly of Mount Tabor HS in Winston Salem, and a consensus all-state point guard can finish his transfer work. The 6-2 sophomore played sparingly at ODU after a red shirt year in 2010-11 and sat out almost all of last year before transferring to A&T last semester.

The Style:

It will be Inside-out always. When pressed about shooting threes, repeatedly the answer was “it’s going to be inside-out” for Alexander. A&T will run a lot of secondary ball screens, a lot of motion back cuts, using second and third options while pressing the tempo on both offense and defense but will do it under control and discipline when opportunities arise off of defensive stops.

Cy was emphatic that this team must and will be physical and mentally tough. His observation was that many times guys took plays off and didn’t play near as hard late in the year as they did earlier.

The Schedule:

A lot more home friendly than last year and no more of the crazy 7,000-mile road hiatus for two months as in previous years. There will be open practice the first week for the general public to see, open exhibition games against Fayetteville State (Nov.3), Blue- Gold (Nov. 5) and Barber Scotia (Nov. 5)

We will play quite a few games in November and December at home with Greensboro College, Eastern Kentucky, UNCG, Campbell, and a couple of other lower tier D-1 teams. We will travel to Las Vegas for a tourney, Cincinnati, Seton Hall, and Iowa State as the main head liners on the road. Not easy but not overly taxing and at least a shot at maybe actually winning one or two of these money games. He will entertain a “fan briefing” with AAF members at halftime of the women’s games to give them a preview of what to expect going into the nightcap, a tradition he has held since his days at SCSU.

The kids do get Christmas off this year which all of them seemed extremely happy about.

There were a lot more things talked about in the hour and half but far too numerous to go into every detail. So post any additional questions or pm me and I’ll be glad to answer as best as I can based on my notes and questions asked.

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