So far at preseason practices, set plays have been in the mix more than in past years. But coach Glen Miller’s motion offense isn’t disappearing completely.
“Last year, more often we would come down and just be in our motion right away,” junior forward Jack Eggleston said. “Everything builds up to the motion offense. So a lot of the stuff is similar, but we have a little tweaks here and there.”
As a result, the motion offense will no longer take up as much of the 35-second shot clock. Rather, a set play will take up a significant portion of the time, with motion as the fallback if a play fails to generate any points.
Hopefully, players will be able to learn the modified offense more easily, especially the freshmen. Set plays don’t require as thorough an understanding of where everyone on the court is going to be.
“The motion offense is tough, especially if you gotta run it for 35 seconds,” Eggleston said. “[With set plays,] there’s much less chance of something getting messed up.”
Defense wins championships. Although Miller is slightly altering the offense, much of the team’s preseason focus has been on the other side of the court. According to Eggleston, more than half of the team’s practices have been primarily focused on defense.
“We feel like that’s one of the biggest areas that need improvement,” Eggleston said. “I think we’ve made some good strides.”
And given last year’s numbers, the work is necessary. The Quakers let up a League-high 69.1 points per game, their second-straight year at the bottom of the rankings. In fact, in Miller’s three years at Penn, the Quakers have never finished with a scoring defense ranked higher than seventh in the conference.
Grouped in with the work on defense is a focus on conditioning. Miller has worked in a new conditioning drill, one that requires sprinting for three minutes instead of the previous two.
The bigs are back. The graduation of centers Cam Lewis and Brennan Votel left a vacancy at the big-man role for the Quakers this year. Fortunately for Penn, though, a slew of injured forwards and centers look to be back at full strength for this season.
At 6-foot-9 and 245 pounds, senior Andreas Schreiber is the biggest player on the roster. He seems to be fully recovered from a torn labrum suffered last year and ready to take a leading role in the Penn frontcourt.
But he’s not the only returning player that looks to make an impact. Sophomores Larry Loughery and Mike Howlett, who missed most of their freshman years due to injuries, have made great strides to return and their work has not gone unnoticed.
“Larry’s been playing very well,” junior Tyler Bernardini said. “He’s been working very hard and doing really well in practice. Mike Howlett has been playing really well too, he’s gonna get a lot of minutes.”
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