ROCHESTER, N.Y. – As his team was filing out of the locker room at the Louis Alexander Palestra on Friday afternoon for their 78thpractice of the season, Bob Hughes leaned back and tried to put a perspective on how his team has handled a week of attention.
The selection show on Monday. The friends and classmates chatting them up every day. The camera crews showing up on Wednesday. The six-hour trip on Wednesday night to upstate New York through some snowy New York roads.
"Once we’ve got between the lines, I think the focus has been pretty good on basketball," Hughes said. "The other stuff is something that we’ve not really been accustomed to. Once we get onto the floor, we’ve found a way to have some good work and done a good job. We’ll see how today goes when we have a different arena, but we’ve been pretty good with that."
The ultimate test, however, in tournament basketball always comes with the first game. And for Rosemont, that test is one of the ultimate ones in Division III basketball- a first round game against two-time champion Amherst on Friday night (5:30) in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
The challenge is steep for the Ravens, who will be making their first appearance in college basketball’s championship round. For the Mammoths, they have made the NCAA Tournament eight of the past nine seasons with legendary coach Dave Hixon, who is in his 42ndseason at Amherst.
"It’s amazing how many layups teams miss against them or don’t take against them," Hughes said. "There are people who don’t shoot within eight or ten feet around the rim because they make it extremely difficult to go out and get easy baskets. That is their strength- they shut down the area around the rim. We certainly don’t see that in the CSAC, but you don’t see it at any level. That’s a testament to their fundamentals and their coaching."
The Ravens have won eight straight after a 7-12 start to the season to earn the CSAC title. In the CSAC tournament, they were lead by junior swing guard Keith Blassingale, who averaged 37 points in the wins at Wilson and Cairn. Blassingale has been through the NCAA grind before with Cabrini in 2018.
However, it would figure that the Mammoths are going to key on Blassingale, forcing others in the lineup to try to beat them. One thing that has helped Rosemont down the stretch is that there’s been a steady stream of contributors in Jalil Myers, Jacob Simonson, Nick Gemmell, Alex Epps-Ortiz and Perry Belcher who have stepped forward in critical moments. That will be needed again to pull the upset over Amherst.
"We can’t win this game without having a complete team effort," Hughes said. "It would be easier to think that one person could carry us. That’s not realistic against a team like that. To compete, we need to have great efforts on both sides of the ball. If not, they have a ton of weapons that they can exploit."
Hughes said that one thing he’s picked the brains of coaches that the popular coach has been familiar with is the rituals and procedures of coaching in an NCAA Tournament. There will be four media timeouts- something common for the Division I game that rarely happens at the D-III level- per half. There’s also the practice element that comes into play with more attention and the fatigue factors.
"I don’t think that for me, it’s a concern," Hughes said. "It’s not one that I realize yet. Maybe down the road, something will happen and I will think about it differently. But this is the way that I know how to do things. I’ve had some people around me that have shared opinions and given advice. So much of that doesn’t involve basketball- logistics and other stuff.
"Ultimately, we’ll practice and I don’t think that the practice will be any different than the other 77. It doesn’t practice from the last 15 pre-game practices and I don’t think they will respond differently. We’ve found a way to prepare with this group. The problems are always unique. But if we go out there today and something is more dramatically different, I’ll have a better answer for you. But we’ll keep doing it the way that we’ve done it before."
