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Miners ready to rock as Arizona visits
5 hours ago • By Bruce Pascoe
UTEP
G C.J. Cooper (6-0 senior)
G Julian Washburn (6-8 senior)
F Vince Hunter (6-8 sophomore
F Cedrick Lang (6-10 senior)
C Matt Willms (7-1 sophomore)
HOW THEY MATCH UP
UTEP overview: After injuries and the dismissal of three key players last season, coach Tim Floyd may have his best team yet at UTEP. The Miners are experienced, big and aggressive, with a potential NBA player in versatile forward Vince Hunter. They can start a lineup with two 6-foot-8 wings, an improving big man in Cedrick Lang and a high-upside center in Matt Willms. Their offense, not surprisingly, is heavy on post scoring and their defense, in true Floyd fashion, is mostly man-to-man but can flash a 1-3-1 zone, 2-3 zone, box-and-one or even a triangle-and-two. They tried the triangle-and-two briefly at the beginning of their game at UA three seasons ago.
KEY PLAYERS
UTEP
Vince Hunter
You might not see Hunter much this season in the Conference USA but the NBA folks know all about him: After earning the C-USA’s freshman of the year honor last season,
he joined UA’s Stanley Johnson and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson at the LeBron James camp, showing off his ability to score off drives or jumpers as well as attracting fouls.
UTEP has sold out 112 previous games at the Don Haskins Center, largely because of the Bear’s success, and tonight it will also feel energized. It might feel historic. And, if Floyd’s well-equipped Miners manage to pull off an upset, it will be historic.
“Well, I don’t know that I’d go that far,” Floyd said of UTEP’s upset chances over Arizona, a 7.5-point favorite. “I know the game is really great for us to help us work on things we have to for our conference. But the notion of winning it? When you’re ranked No. 3, that means there are 340 teams not as good as you. That’s kind of where we are.”
True, maybe, but so is this: Floyd may have his best team yet at UTEP, a contender for Conference USA title, with size, experience and talent that includes NBA prospect Vince Hunter, a versatile combination forward.
There’s also this: While coaching USC from 2005-09 – just before Sean Miller arrived at Arizona — Floyd’s Trojans beat the Wildcats five out of eight times.
A well-respected strategist who has run multiple high-major college and NBA teams, Floyd is known for adjusting offenses to his personnel and mixing up man-to-man, zone and gimmick defenses.
He also has three former head coaches on his staff to help out: Phil Johnson, the former UA assistant under Lute Olson and head coach at San Jose State; Bobby Braswell, the former longtime coach at Cal State Northridge; and Bob Cantu, who took over for the fired Kevin O’Neill as USC’s interim head coach in 2012-13.
“Tim Floyd and his staff do an excellent job and the way they coach the game can change, especially defensively, from one game to the next,” UA coach Sean Miller said. “They have a tremendous player in Hunter and in terms of going on the road, it’s always hard, but it’s always even more difficult early in the season because you haven’t done it a lot.”
Tonight’s game will be the first true road test for the three UA freshmen in the playing rotation — Stanley Johnson, Parker Jackson-Cartwright and Dusan Ristic — but Miller said he would rely on his veteran players to help bring the younger guys along.
UTEP will counter with experience and, maybe, the passion of a late-night sold-out crowd.
For the Miners, it’s nearly perfect timing to host this kind of showdown. When he took over UTEP in 2010, Floyd said he wanted to build the program with freshmen, not transfers, and his team is only now turning into the kind of fully bred, experienced bunch he was aiming for.
Floyd had planned on it to happen last season, when he was set to mix in returnees with a well-regarded recruiting class that included five-star guard Isaac Hamilton, center Matt Willms of Nevada’s Findlay Prep and Hunter.
But, in a well-publicized tussle, Hamilton opted to back out of his letter-of-intent against Floyd’s wishes, and now plays for UCLA. Floyd also lost a well-regarded junior college recruit who opted not to play Division I ball and another recruit to academics.
Then, last January, Floyd dismissed three rotation players, including leading scorer McKenzie Moore, after an FBI investigation found they had bet on sports events (but were not involved with point shaving).
This season, though, Floyd has everyone he expected and it’s showing on the court. The Miners are 4-0 at home and don’t have a bad loss: They lost to Washington in the final of the Wooden Legacy, at Colorado State by three points, and at regional rival New Mexico State (which they beat earlier in El Paso).
In other words, Floyd finally has the kind of team Haskins might recognize.
“When we started this process four years ago, we tried to stay out of the transfer market and tried to get our (recruiting) classes staggered, so we could be in the Gonzaga-Arizona mode and bring in freshmen every year,” Floyd said. “I think there had been a departure from coach Haskins with the coaches who followed him.
“We’re trying to follow what he did. We’re not as good. But we’ve got some really nice young players.”
http://tucson.com/sports/basketball/col ... 60282.html
