UALR expects to see a slightly different South Alabama team under new Coach Jeff Price. How different? What changes? We can only speculate at this point.When UALR travels to South Alabama on Saturday, there will be an element of mystery to the Jaguars. With the sudden retirement of Coach Ronnie Arrow on Wednesday, assistant coach Jeff Price takes over.
Typically
when an assistant coach takes over midseason, they tweak some things. One thing
you should definitely expect is South Alabama players being as loose as they
have been all season. We’re not sure what role Price played in the matrix of
the coaching staff, but Arrow rode his players hard on the court. We’d expect
Price to let them play.
But just how
that will look remains a bit of a mystery. In order to get a glimpse of the
future, we’ll take a look at Price’s past.
He was an
assistant coach at South Alabama before leaving to start the basketball program
at Lynn University in 1993. In his six seasons there, they went to the
postseason six times and his teams were noted for their running style of play.
When he left for Georgia Southern, he promised “to have a program at Georgia
Southern that will be fun to watch.”
At Georgia
Southern he had three 20-victory seasons in 10 years. He also took the Eagles
to the NIT in 2006. He quit after a 2008-2009 season in which they finished
8-22 and were
in the midst of an NCAA investigation.
In 2004-2005,
Georgia Southern led the nation in possessions per 40 minutes. In their NIT
season of 2005-2006, they finished 13th in the nation in possessions
per 40 minutes.
We also know
Price likes to press and trap opponents. In fact, he’s got a DVD out for
coaches called One-and-Done Full-Court traps. The description reads like this:
“One-and-Done Full-Court Traps presents a detailed overview of a game-tested,
baseline-to-baseline method for trapping and applying pressure defensively.
Appropriate for coaches and teams at all competitive levels, the DVD uses
on-the-court player demonstrations to help explain and illustrate how coaches
can confuse their opponents by applying intense, full-court defensive pressure.”
Sections of the DVD focus on a 1-2-1-1 press and
2-2-1 press.
This year, South Alabama rates 93rd
in the country in possessions per 40 minutes. The Jaguars ranked 177th
last year.
Price and some of the South Alabama players were
supposed to speak to the media this morning. But we’ve yet to see any reports
from that. No idea if it happened or if folks just haven’t filed stories yet.
