The lights at the Wayne Estes Center were on early Tuesday. Utah State’s men’s basketball team showed up in time for practice at 7 a.m., but it was a former member of the team, Aggie legend Sam Merrill, who showed up first. He flipped the lights on a 5:45 for an offseason workout as he prepares for another season in the NBA.
“I sent a video to the Cavs general manager,” USU head coach Jerrod Calhoun said. “I said there’s not too many players in the NBA that grind like Sam Merrill.”
For the current Aggie players, it’s a bit earlier than they’re used to practicing, at least in the offseason. Calhoun said they’ve done more early-morning work, getting up a 6 a.m. and in either the weight room or gym by 7 a.m., something Calhoun said has been good for the team.
“We’re really kind of modeling what Houston does,” Calhoun said. “Talked to Alan Bishop, an Aggie, a strength coach down there at Houston and really picked his brain about a month ago of how we kind of want to attack this summer and all our workouts have been really, really early.”
Utah State is now three weeks into practices, with a short break coming now at the end of June. For this early Tuesday practice, Calhoun invited members of the media to the Estes Center to watch the one-hour practice. Some of my own observations are already accounted for on an episode of the Full Court Press. This will function as a written summary. It won’t be a super organized narrative, mostly a dump of all the notes and impressions I had during the hour-long practice. But there will be one seperation between a bunch of observations on player measurables and what I saw happening on the court.
Player Measurables
Getting a first in-person look at players is a good chance to sort of double-check height and weight listings. Some of these are already reflected on the online roster, but a few more are worth adding and commenting on.
Firstly, there’s an oddity in that Elijah Perryman is very likely being sold short on his height listing whereas most of the time a player’s height is inflated. I touched on this in my breakdown of the incoming freshman, but it’s almost certain that Perryman isn’t as short as his 6-foot-1 listing. MaxPreps listed him at 6-foot-3 and having now seen him in person, I’m more inclined to believe that height.
Keeping with height real quick, Calhoun made a comment about Adlan Elamin being 6-foot-10 or even 6-foot-11 which is 1-2 inches taller than his reported 6-foot-9 height. It wouldn’t be the first time someone kept growing upon getting to college and it only adds to the potential that Elamin has.
Moving on to weight and there are multiple players that are well above their playing weights last year (in a good way, I’m not calling them fat). Tucker Anderson, after weighing in at 190 lbs according to last year’s roster, is now at 210 with Calhoun saying the wing added 17 to 18 pounds of “good, solid muscle.” Given a somewhat thin group of bigs, Anderson being able to add enough good weight to play power forward full time makes him an incredibly valuable part of the rotation, especially with his skillset. It puts him in a position to be the next Taylor Funk.
Although most of the freshman are on the thin side, one player who weighs in more than I anticipated is David Iweze. His high school weight listing was just 215 pounds, not atypical for a high school big, but needing to bulk up to catch up to the larger bigs in the collegiate ranks. Though, according to Calhoun, the young Iweze is already up to 235 pounds, which is around the playing weight of Karson Templin last year.
Zach Keller is another player who seems to have added weight. His listed height and weight at Utah and even on the roster right now at USU, is 6-foot-10 and 235 lbs, but Calhoun said Keller could be closer to 6-foot-11 and weighing 245 lbs.
One minor disappointment was seeing Garry Clark look pretty much all of the 210 pounds he’s listed at. On film, it looked like he was maybe closer to 225 and could maybe be a decently physically dominant power forward if he put on a few pounds on top of that. But it’s clear he’s on the smaller end of power forward size. It’s not the end of the world for him to be smaller provided Clark is still able to be an effective post player and rebounder. The reason his size is a small concern isn’t that a PF weighing 210 pounds can’t be effective (Justin Bean was listed at that exact weight and he turned out fine), it’s that the Aggies need big bodies in the paint. Clark will bring more finesse on a team that is already stacked with finesse and needs guys with the size to stand up to teams that have tons of size.
Actual on-court stuff (player specific)
Given it’s just one hour and I’m not able to go back over practice, film, I’m limited to seeing how players did on-ball, with overall defensive impact and most off-ball things not really sticking out to me (like most people, my eyes are glued to the ball when I watch sports). This meant it was harder to get a read on how good USU’s new bigs (Iweze, Keller and Clark) are at this stage. Outside of some post-ups from Clark, most of what these guys do will be off-ball cutting, screen-setting and finishing and it’s hard to fully appreciate that fully in just an hour of watching practice.
Even then, Keller did stand out quite a bit. His impact in the pick-and-roll was pretty clear. He had several finishes off ball-screen actions and even got open for some 3-pointers off the pick-and-pop. These were things I outlined about Keller’s game in my transfer breakdown article about him and it was good to see that in person.
Templin is pretty clearly working on his 3-pointer, trying to add that to his game. Last year there were glimpses of him as an outside shooter (he made 8 of 16 threes to start the season) but his 29.5% rate on 3-pointers for the season needs significant improvement. In the practice, Templin let it fly plenty from distance with decent success and at least a couple makes that I personally saw during drills or 5-on-5.
Speaking of 3-point shooting, probably the most impressive day came from Luke Kearney. The only shot I remember him missing was an isolation fadeaway mid-range jumper, a very difficult shot. Every other attempt, which included a decent number of 3-pointers, all went through the net. A few weeks ago, my stats prediction article speculated that Kearney would redshirt, and seeing this practice is making me rethink that.
Looking at the backcourt, most people would have said the strength of this team is in its wings and guards, and that played out in this practice. Mason Falslev continues to be a baller and high-energy player. He hit threes, was a playmaker and vocal leader on the court. But that’s nothing new. The two guys who will have eyes on them for a potential impact this season are MJ Collins and Kolby King, the transfers from Vanderbilt and Butler, respectively. Both were impressive in multiple ways.
My assessment of Collins two months ago was that he’s a “good athlete” and after an in-person viewing, that statement really undersold Collins. He’s a great athlete, very fluid with or without the ball in his hands, and he’s explosive. Beyond his physical capabilities, the practice showed that Collins will clearly has some on-ball creation as part of his role at Utah State, with his peak potential being replacing Ian Martinez’s spot in the offensive ecosystem.
King is a player that just “has that dog in him,” diving on the floor for loose balls, being a hound and pest on defense while also being productive on offense. He’s a real contender to push Drake Allen for the starting point guard role and be a significant contributor in the backcourt his season. He sees himself as an all-around player that should contribute well.
“I’m a guard that can do it on both sides of the floor. Anything to do for the team,” King said. “Play defense, turn it into offense. Be a facilitator. Score when the team wants me to. Whatever it takes.”
Something else King noted in that interview was the vision Calhoun had for King in the Aggies’ system. And, having seen his film and now some in-person practice, it’s pretty clear his style fits very well at Utah State.
Notes on team as a whole
Probably the most notable thing about the team’s performance as a group was the amount of turnovers, which was both a good and bad thing. A lot of pockets were picked and a lot of passes were deflected and/or picked off. That made the defense look good, the offense not so much.
“Coach Haut and Coach Hill like (the turnovers), but I don’t,” Calhoun quipped.
There is a pretty clear emphasis on defense with this team, though. It was a constant topic of discussion late last season and a big talking point so far this offseason. Calhoun noted the added length of the team through the portal and high school recruiting has been part of that defensive emphasis.
“Defensively, we want to get better. We’ve talked about it,” Calhoun said. “You saw MJ Collins and some of the size and length we have, Adlan and some of these freshmen. And even our returning guys will pick it up a lot better in year two. So collectively, we want to be better defensively. So we’re going to put emphasis on that this summer.”
The team also went very fast for virtually every drill. Most of the time the offense was running drills or doing 5-on-5, plays began on the defensive end, beginning with an actual or simulated rebound or in-bound after a score. That’s nothing terribly new, though, as Calhoun brought this up-tempo, transition-heavy offense with him and implemented it last year. A consequence of this pace was it exposed some of the weaknesses on the team, partly by design. Iweze said part of the coaching they’re receiving is that they need to “make mistakes so we can learn from them so that we can make them here and when we’re in the game we can be ready to play.” The Aggies made mistakes and quite a few. Luckily, they’re the kind that get refined with more reps.
The new assistant coaches
The Aggies recently added two assistant coaches, both of whom are actually making a return to Logan. Johnny Hill will serve as an assistant coach and Curran Walsh will be the director of player personnel and analytics. Hill was with the Aggies during Danny Sprinkle’s tenure and Walsh was here with Craig Smith. Both won conference titles while at Utah State. Calhoun spoke at length about bringing these two in, from the feedback he got from other coaches, to the players accepting them, to working these assistants up the coaching ladder in the long run.
I think what’s special about Utah State is the coaching tree. It’s a bunch of guys that love their time in Logan, loved being here. So when you talk to Coach Smith about Curran Walsh. You talk to Danny Sprinkle about Johnny Hill. I got rave reviews. But it doesn’t stop there,” Calhoun said. “What I like to do is I like to take a really deep dive beyond that. So really what I did is I talked to Sam quite a bit about Curran. I talked to Mason and I talked to KT about Johnny. Players know real coaches. Players know coaches that are knowledgeable and have motors. Sam and Mason and KT both signed off on all these guys and to me this is a players program. I’ve got to listen to my players and I thought we did a really good job in those hires. These are young guys that want to move up to coaching ranks, want to be head coaches. Feel like we got a couple guys on my staff that are ready right now.”
