By Ryan Honey
Sitting and observing from a platform overlooking a University of Delaware Men’s Basketball practice, I noticed right away that both the players and coaches are always smiling and having a good time. However, they’re also ready to get down to business. They have uptempo rap music playing through the speakers at practice, giving the guys an extra boost of energy.
The offseason workouts don’t contain the seriousness and intensity that an in-season practice would. But that doesn’t take away from the players and coaches’ effort to get the work in.
“We play a lot of music in practice, that kind of gets our guys going,” said head coach Martin Ingelsby.
As the players began their layup lines and stretching, I wondered if this was going to be more of a shootaround-type practice due to the fact it’s the offseason. There’s a possibility that they haven’t really gotten into offensive or defensive sets yet.
Just overlooking the practice, it doesn’t seem like the Blue Hens are putting anything together as far as situational game planning at this point. However, the fundamentals and the five-on-five workouts are still important for the squad as a whole. You can’t gameplan for opponents without putting the building block-type pieces together first.
“We do some breakdown stuff where it’s bigs and perimeter whether we’re working on certain concepts or certain defensive coverages, but then we do a lot of five-on-five stuff,” Ingelsby said. “So our offense is really predicated on guys learning how to play together, and the more you do that the more efficient you can be on the offensive end and the better chemistry you have.”
Ingelsby touched upon another aspect of their practices that they started getting into this past year that really brings a more energized vibe to the gym.
“The one thing we’ve done that I think has been good for us: we always end practice with 100 three-point makes as a team,” Ingelsby said. “We go through this shooting session where we have to make 100 threes as a team, so I think that’s a good way to end practice. But we do rev the music up to get started, those guys kind of have their playlist to get the energy in the gym.”
Coach Ingelsby did point out that when it gets to be in-season, there will be more game planning aspects in both practices and workouts.
“I think as we get into this season, it’s probably week by week with the areas we’re focusing on based on us and the opponents that we’re playing,” Ingelsby noted. “A lot of what we do is kind of focusing on what we need to do well to position against whoever we’re playing in the upcoming game.”
As the spring semester wraps up in these next couple weeks, the Blue Hens will have to transition for the summer session, and eventually welcome in the new freshmen players. However, the team will end up having some rest after the end of this semester before the initial summer session begins.
“We’re going to let our guys go home at the end of the spring semester and they get about 10 days before the ‘Summer Session 1’ starts, so they all have to be back June 10th,” Ingelsby explained. “So we’ll be here for five weeks until July 12th, we’ll let them go home for a little bit and then we’re going to come back at the end of July for about a week of practice.”
The Blue Hens will have some games this summer. They will play around three when they take their trip to the Bahamas in August.
“Then we’re heading to the Bahamas,” Ingeslby stated. “We’re taking the team there for about six days, August 5th to the 11th. We’ll play three games over there. It comes at a great time with where we are with our program, it’s a great opportunity for us to play against some professional teams and get some reps but also a great opportunity to grow and bond together.”
Overall, a Blue Hens basketball practice, even in the offseason, seems to provide aspects from both fundamentally-sound and also playbook-oriented basketball. As the players get up their shots and work on improving for the upcoming season, they’re doing it with energy and the real sense of wanting to be a part of this program.