The first day of college basketball practice historically has been a milestone day, like the start of spring training or football training camp. After a long hot summer for college basketball junkies, the start of practice was like New Year’s Eve, right down to teams holding events like Midnight Madness, celebrations centered on starting practice at the first possible moment.
But with the changes to the NCAA calendar, with summer practices going from a few guys at a time in a gym with a coach to full-fledged full-team workouts, the first day isn’t even the first day anymore. So while Monday marked the official start of practice for St. Louis University for its 2025-26 season, pointing toward the season opener on Nov. 3 against Southeast Missouri State, it was, in many ways, merely Monday.
“This has become probably the most anticlimactic thing,” SLU coach Josh Schertz said Monday before his team took the court.
SLU has been on the court since June, which helps when you have 10 new players on the roster, and Schertz and his staff have charted about 2,000 possessions from in-practice games over almost 100 hours of practice, giving themselves a decent picture of what the team has and where it’s going while the players have gotten up to speed on the Schertz system.
“There’s kind of a telepathic, symphonic nature to it that requires a lot of repetitions to get there, particularly when you have 10 new guys,” Schertz said. “To play, to read each other, to have that level of cohesion, you can’t just walk out and do it. We got to start in June and play through a lot of the mistakes. And hopefully it’s something that we scale as we go and is much better on Sept. 22 and it was on June 2. Hopefully it’s way better on Nov. 3 than we are today.”
Cohesion is a big challenge everywhere in college basketball as players move freely between schools. SLU returns Robbie Avila, Kalu Anya, Kellen Thames, Amari McCottry and Dylan Warlick.
“I think we’re still working on that,” Avila said, “finding the different lineups, whether it’s a smaller ball lineup or a bigger lineup, we’re working on a bunch of different things here. Just figuring out what guys on-court tendencies are is the biggest thing I’ve learned, figuring out what a guy’s going to do in a different sceneario or what a guy’s really good at and how I can help him.”
And for the newcomers, there’s a lot to learn. Forward Ishan Sharma, a forward who played last season at Virginia, ran through the toughest parts to get to know.
“The new reads and the new way of just a flow offense,” he said, “and getting one trigger to the next trigger, to the next action, to the next action, just being smart and staying consistent to the whole possession.
“It’s been fun. It’s obviously a different style of play from where I was at. But the offense is good, the defense is good, the style of play is very intricate and very detail oriented, very free flowing, but I feel like it helps me to expand on what I do good and what other people do good.”
“I think we’re actually getting the system really well,” said Avila, the player most entrenched in the system. “With Schertz’s system, with time is how you get better. We haven’t played outside competition yet, so that will be the true test of learning what his offense is like, but we’re three months in, four months in, so I think we’ve got a pretty good grasp of what it is.”
What does change with the start of practice is schedules. Teams can practice on 30 of the 42 days between now and opening day, and the time restrictions are loosened. For players and staff, it means for a more regular schedule. And that started on Monday.
“I think there’s just a different energy to it, being the first official day,” said Avila. “Kind of shows you how much closer we are to the season starting. We’re going to attack with the same mentality we have since Day One of the summer. We’re going to come out today and just get after it.”
And even Avila, who knows the Schertz system better than anybody, is still learning.
“I’ve gotten smarter,” he said. “I think that’s something Schertz’s system does over time. Year in, year out, I’m constantly learning new things, seeing different defenses and that kind of stuff. My experience helps me see the game differently than last year or the year before.”
SLU is short one player as practice starts. Freshman guard/forward Cam Hudson has a shoulder injury and he and his family are considering options. If the decision is made to go a surgical route, Hudson would probably miss most of the season.
Guard Dion Brown, a transfer from Boston College, had surgery on his meniscus in July but has returned to practice and has been a full participant for a week.
“Everybody else has been pretty healthy,” Schertz said. “We want to keep that between now and November and moving forward. I think we’re due a run of good health, so we need to take advantage of it.”
SLU will mark the start of practice with Billiken Madness on Friday at 6:30 p.m. at Chaifetz Arena in conjunction with the school’s homecoming. After the event, fans will have the chance to meet members of the men’s and women’s teams.
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Tom Timmermann | Post-Dispatch
Soccer reporter
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