Basketball coaches check out possible walk-ons
The odds of making the men’s basketball scout team Saturday were small. Tiny. Maybe even microscopic.
But 15 Utah State University students braved the odds in HPER Building, Room 209 to give the annual tryouts a shot.
Phil Rinehart, a senior majoring in accounting, came mainly to see how a college basketball team runs a practice.
“I just kind of wanted to see what it’s like and see what goes on, not that I really stand a chance,” he said. “It’s always something I’ve wanted to do.”
The hour-long tryout started with a three-man weave drill at each half of the court, followed by a handful of five-on-five full-court scrimmages.
Second year USU assistant coach Tim Duryea was in charge along with former Aggie Tony Brown, who is now a graduate assistant with the team.
Afterward, Duryea pointed out a couple players that caught his eye because of their size and quickness. However, he said their chances of making the scout team are “slim, slim, slim” because the Aggies already have three walk-ons on the team, two of which are trying to earn a scholarship.
One of the players Duryea had an eye on was Virginia native Eric Christensen, a junior majoring in physics.
Christensen, 22, stands about 6-foot-4, and said he hasn’t played much basketball since high school where he was the “17th man on a 12-man team.”
He said he came expecting the tryout to be more physically demanding than it was.
“I’m 22, so its been a while,” he said. “I thought he was gonna run us more [and] do sprints and see how fast we were. It’s exciting [Duryea mentioned me].”
The scout team prepares a team’s regular players for upcoming opponents during the season, and Duryea said finding players for it is what the tryouts are for.
One of the main things he said he was looking for was somebody who could pick up on things quick and has a good amount of basketball knowledge.
“When you’re on the scout team you’re getting a whole play book thrown at you every single week,” he said. “You’re getting the opponents play book thrown at you, and you’ve got to pick that up in 30 to 45 minutes and be able to run that against our players.”
There are two types of walk-ons, Duryea said. The first is somebody who walks on with the coaching staff encouraging him to do so because they might have a chance at earning a scholarship.
The other is the kind the tryouts are built for.
“The other walk-on is the kid that comes and walks on and knows that, barring almost a miracle, he’s not going to earn a scholarship all four years and he’s going to be a scout team player,” he said.
The USU coaching staff will meet Monday and decide whether or not what they saw Saturday will meet certain needs of the team, Duryea said.
He told the group of 15 at the end of the scrimmages that if they don’t receive a call by Tuesday, they probably didn’t make any kind of impression.
Also, the USU basketball team saw action in its first two practices of the season Saturday, one coming in the Spectrum in the morning and the other in the afternoon after the tryouts ended.
“I think we have a chance to have another good team,” Duryea said. “We’ve got some athletic ability, a lot of new guys. They’re gonna have to learn in a hurry, but we’ve got a chance.”
-samhis@cc.usu.edu