Toreros have a ?bunch of new faces?

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Here?s some sage advice if you plan to attend a USD men?s basketball game this season: Get a program.

?I?m still trying to remember all their names,? coach Bill Grier said.

He was joking, or was he?

The Toreros will still wear baby blue uniforms, and Grier and his staff will still coach them, but that?s about where any similarities to previous teams end. There are five true freshmen, one redshirt freshman, a sophomore transfer, a junior transfer. There is more size than at maybe any time in USD history. There is more athleticism. More speed. More depth.

?I?m kind of shocked how different this team is,? said senior guard Devin Ginty, the lone player on the roster who has been with Grier for his four years at USD. ?It?s a lot different. But that?s going to help us, in that I think we?ll be able to sneak up on some people.

?We?ve got a lot of guys nobody has seen play before.?

Of the 13 scholarship players on the roster, nine are freshmen or sophomores. Seven have never played a minute for the Toreros.

?A bunch of new faces,? Grier said.

He didn?t have much choice. He lost Brandon Johnson and four senior starters from an 11-21 team, and two other regulars transferred. Another veteran, Brazilian Rafael Crescencio, didn?t return for his senior season because of recurring knee problems.

So it?s hardly a surprise that the Toreros were picked to finish last in the eight-team league in the coaches? preseason poll. Unfamiliarity does not breed respect.

?I understand,? Grier said after practice the other day. ?We lost four seniors. They were four senior starters, and you?re replacing them with freshmen. I get it. But I do think that this team will surprise some people before the season?s over.?

Here are five keys to doing that:
The schedule

Grier is treading a fine line between giving his young team a taste of big-time college hoops and having them devoured by it. The Toreros won?t as much play their early schedule as survive it.

There is tonight?s game against Division III Occidental. No problem.

But there are nonconference road games at Stanford, at New Mexico, at Cal State Fullerton, at San Diego State, at North Carolina State, plus a first-round game in the Hawaiian Airlines Diamond Head Classic against Baylor followed by either Washington State or Mississippi State. Oh, and then they open the West Coast Conference with two games on the road.

In one particularly brutal three-week stretch from mid-December to early January, the Toreros play six straight road games while traveling 10,000 miles across six times zones.

It gets easier after that, but what kind of shape will they be in by then?
The sleeper

It?s the closest thing to a trade that you?ll find in college basketball. Point guard Patrick McCollum played at USD last season and is now at Salt Lake Community College in Utah. And point guard Darian Norris played at SLCC last season and is now at USD.

But while McCollum struggled to adjust to USD and the Division I game, the 6-0 Norris already might be the Toreros? best player.

?Darian can score ? he can create his own shot,? Grier said. ?But what I like about him is he doesn?t have to score to be effective ? If I have to compare him to anybody in the league, I?d compare him to T.J. Campbell at Portland. He?s a lot like him, and I think he can have that kind of impact on our program.?

Campbell was a JC transfer as well and a key piece in Portland?s transformation from WCC also-ran to title contender, averaging 30 minutes and double-figure scoring with a 2-to-1 assist to turnover ratio in his two seasons there.

Norris originally signed with South Carolina State out of Mojave High in Las Vegas, then went to Bradley as a freshman and played mostly shooting guard before switching to the point last season at SLCC.
The style

USD has averaged 62.4 and 61.7 points the past two seasons. Look for that to increase.

The three things you need to run effectively are bigs (to rebound), athletes (to get down the court) and depth (to keep everyone fresh). And while he might not have them in the quantities of, say, San Diego State, Grier does have them in greater abundance than in previous seasons.

?We?ve put a greater emphasis on getting the ball up the floor in transition than we have in the past,? the coach said. ?We?re trying to play faster and get some easier baskets, so we?re not always grinding it out in the half court.?

The sophomores

Despite the attention on all the newcomers, the key to the season may rest on three underclassmen returnees. College players typically make their biggest improvement from their freshman to sophomore seasons, and the Toreros are counting on that from post Chris Manresa, swingman Ken Rancifer and guard Cameron Miles.

Manresa and Rancifer are expected to start, and Miles might be the first guy off the bench. And they often will find themselves matched up against the opponent?s best scorer.

?Those three,? Grier said, ?have to be successful for us as the year goes on for us to have success.?
The scoring

5.7, 5.4, 4.4, 3.2, 1.7, .7 ? that?s the extent of USD?s returning scorers from last season.

Gone are the top four scorers, and six of the top eight. In their place is ? well, we?re about to find out.

?I think we?ll be a little more balanced,? Grier said. ?We?re not so dependent on, ?OK, if he doesn?t score 20, we?re in trouble tonight.? ?

Ginty, one of two seniors on the roster, put it this way: ?I loved all the guys I played with in the past ? great guys. But sometimes here or there, guys who felt like they hadn?t scored in a while would try to attack one-on-one. With this team, we have great chemistry. No one feels they have to have a stat line.?

 

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USD men win season opener

This was the nightmare USD basketball coach Bill Grier was living Friday night:

Midway through the first half, his Toreros were shooting 71.4 percent from the floor, had drained five of eight three-pointers, had made both their free throws ? and had a one-point lead against Division III Occidental and its roster of 5-foot-8 point guards and 6-5 posts and, yes, a freshman forward named Ty Cobb. And Oxy had the ball.

The Toreros eventually figured it out and lurched their way to an 83-66 victory in the season opener, saving 1,734 nervous fans in Jenny Craig Pavilion from the ultimate indignity for a Div. I program.

It?s hard to glean much from these interdivisional games, particularly so early in the season, but it probably provided a sneak peek of things to come.

The Toreros figure to be both terrible and terrific, sometimes in the same week, sometimes in the same game, sometimes in the same half.

?I think with this group, with how young we are, I?m going to have to be pretty patient,? Grier said.

Ten minutes in: Losing 24-21 after Oxy freshman Kris Montoya drained another of his four three-pointers en route to a game-high 21 points.

Five minutes later: Leading 39-26 after playing stifling defense and making seven straight shots, four by freshman Dennis Kramer. By halftime it was 50-32.

But the second half was more of the same, the Tigers closing to 10 before the Toreros bulged the margin to 20.

?There were a lot of good things we did, but there are a lot of things we need to correct,? said Grier, whose team plays at Stanford on Monday. ?We?re going to have to get tougher as a group, and that?s sometimes hard for young guys to understand. We didn?t play with the aggressiveness or intensity we need to play with for the rest of our schedule.

?We need to fix that.?

The Toreros shot 58.8 percent from the field and had four players in double figures, most notably Kramer, the 6-10 La Costa Canyon High alum who had 12 points off the bench in his collegiate debut. Ten of his points came in a scintillating five-minute stretch in the first half, when he had two three pointers, a dunk and a textbook jump hook off the glass.

?Dennis came in and gave us a presence out there,? Grier said, ?not only shooting on the perimeter but a presence inside on defense.?

Grier was without four players. Sophomore transfer Chris Gabriel and redshirt freshman Jordan Mackie were sidelined with the flu bug that has ravaged the team in recent weeks. Simi Fajemisin is redshirting. And fellow freshman Ben Vozzola is being held out while Grier decides if he will redshirt as well.

In the wacky world of NCAA basketball, the game counted for USD and was considered an exhibition for Occidental. But when the Tigers return to San Diego on Dec. 31 to play SDSU, it will count for both.

?They come into this game with much more pressure than we do,? Oxy junior Jack Hanley said. ?People expect them to beat us by 40. That can be frustrating when people don?t understand that there maybe isn?t as big a gap (in talent) as they think.?

 

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Stanford, Cal men's basketball teams refuel with strong freshman classes


For a few elite freshmen, college basketball is a one-and-done world.

John Wall took the express lane to the NBA after last season and no one will be surprised if his path is followed by North Carolina's Harrison Barnes -- so precocious he was named to the Associated Press preseason All-America team before playing his first game.

Coach Mike Montgomery, who last season guided a Cal team with four senior starters to its first Pac-10 Conference title since 1960, generally keeps freshmen at arm's length. During his 28 seasons as a head coach, only four college rookies have been full-time starters for Montgomery.

That could change this season. Montgomery restocked his roster with five freshmen, and two might be starters from Day 1. There is also a youth movement at Stanford, where coach Johnny Dawkins welcomes six freshmen.

Stanford's half-dozen earned a ranking as the top recruiting class in the Pac-10 and 16th-best in the country, according to Rivals.com. Cal's group was judged third-best in the conference, No. 21 nationwide.

As good as they are, none of the 11 is expected to pack his bags for the pros after one season.

"It's not fair for you to expect them to do all the things you want them to do yet. Most freshmen don't," Montgomery said. "Even the one-and-done freshmen are so phenomenally athletic, they don't need to be fundamentally sound.

"With this group, the key is going to be
execution, and that takes timing and lots of repetition."

With Cal's season opener against Cal State Northridge looming on Tuesday, Montgomery hasn't settled on a starting lineup. But freshman guards Allen Crabbe and Gary Franklin Jr. could be on the floor for the opening tip, and forward Richard Solomon and guards Alex Rossi and Emerson Murray also figure to be in the rotation.

Dawkins wouldn't be pinned down on a lineup for the Cardinal's opener Monday against San Diego, but forward Dwight Powell and one other freshman are likely to be part of it. Point guard Aaron Bright is making a bid for playing time, as are wings Anthony Brown and Josh Huestis. Post players John Gage and Stefan Nastic may need a bit more seasoning.

If Montgomery is tackling a new challenge, Dawkins at least has a frame of reference for his assignment. In 1982, he was part of a highly touted six-player freshman class at Duke.

"There's some familiarity there," Dawkins said. "We didn't have a great freshman year, but we improved."

Did they ever. By the time Dawkins, Jay Bilas, Mark Alarie and David Henderson were seniors, the Blue Devils went 37-3 and reached the national championship game.

From those tender years to now, Dawkins admitted, "I have some gray hairs. Like any young players, they show signs of, 'What did we just work on yesterday?' But they're all enthusiastic, all want to get better, and all want us to be good."

That's the common thread between the Cal and Stanford freshmen: Player expectations are high.

Cal's Solomon anticipates some growing pains but wasn't afraid to suggest, "We plan on (someday) winning the NCAA championship. No matter how many people doubt us, we know we're capable of a lot."

Franklin agrees. "That is our goal," he said. "If you're not thinking that way, you might as well quit the sport. ... I think we'll surprise a lot of people."

With maturity, and all that comes with it, Montgomery suggested, "I'm thinking this could be a pretty good group."

Across the Bay, Dawkins said the coaches are setting "amazing standards" for the freshmen, and Powell said it's their responsibility to reach those goals. "We're basketball players. It's not about age," he said. "It's about what we're here to do, which is win."

Outside expectations for both programs are muted this season. Cal was picked by the media to finish seventh in the Pac-10, Stanford ninth.

At least Stanford has enough veteran presence that Dawkins and his staff don't have to do all the teaching. Four returning players started a combined 108 games last season.

"To hear it from the older guys, our peers who have been through it, is a message that's easier for us to understand," Powell said. "Especially since we have so many guys who aren't 100 percent sure of what's going on."

Montgomery has just two players back who totaled 23 starts a year ago, not enough to show his newcomers what to do and how to do it. "It's kind of starting from scratch in a lot of ways," he said.