With a 6-foot-9, 231-pound man barreling at him, Georgia Tech forward Kammeon Holsey made the painful decision to stand in his path. N.C. State center DeShawn Painter steamrolled along the baseline and into Holsey, who crashed backward. Holsey’s selflessness was rewarded with a charging foul on Painter in the Yellow Jackets’ loss to the Wolfpack on Thursday night.
The charge was a bruising victory for coach Brian Gregory’s attempt to mold the Jackets into hard-nosed scrappers. He has directed the metamorphosis through his refusal to tolerate a variety of basketball sins.
“It’s not punishable by death,” Gregory said. “But the guys know.”
Gregory introduced his concept of “non-negotiables” in his first meeting with the team shortly after his hire in March. He started with his foundational rules, such as attending class, turning in assignments on time and being prompt, respectful and honest.
“He just told us all about what was expected, that his No. 1 rule was to be a solid guy,” center Nate Hicks said.
As of this week, Hicks had yet to run afoul of those policies, but recalled teammates pull a weighted sled up and down the court after arriving late to practice.
Said Hicks, “He might not be the tallest person in the world, but he gets scary a little bit.”
The day before practice began in October, Gregory introduced the punishments for his first three basketball non-negotiables, all related to effort on defense.
If a player doesn’t box out in practice, he is sent to the sideline, where he must execute three box-outs against an assistant wielding a blocking pad. The area to which he is banished is called the “Bewley ring,” in honor of strength-and-conditioning coach Mike Bewley.
If a player doesn’t close out — quickly using short, choppy steps with hands up to draw up to a perimeter player who has received a pass — he is sent to the sideline, where he has to execute proper close-out form the length of the court. That’s known as “getting cornholed.”
Said forward Julian Royal, “I’m not exactly sure why [it’s called that].”
The last is improper technique when helping on defense. A player who leaves his man to help a teammate who has been beaten must arrive with chest squared up, ready to take a charge or seal off a driving lane, as Holsey did Thursday night. If he doesn’t, he must take three charges from teammates.
In his first season, Gregory has been slightly negotiable on his non-negotiables. Not believing the team is ready, he hasn’t introduced all of them yet. And with a thin bench, violations in games are treated on a case-by-case basis. Regardless, said Royal, “You pretty much know when you did something wrong.”
Gregory adopted the practice as an assistant to Michigan State coach Tom Izzo and developed it at Dayton. Gregory has found it to be a more effective and efficient teaching method than stopping practice to lambaste the offender.
“It makes practice go faster,” he said.
Players’ understanding of the non-negotiables has reached a point where they know they’ve been cornholed or remitted to the Bewley ring without needing to be told. Not surprisingly, breaches have declined considerably.
“You might be as tired as pretty much possible, but you’re going to make that last box-out because you know the only thing that’s going to make it worse is missing it,” Hicks said.
It has borne fruit. At this point last season, Tech’s defensive field-goal percentage was 44.0 percent and its rebounding margin was 1.7. After the Jackets’ loss to N.C. State on Thursday, the numbers were 40.5 percent and 4.2 despite losing All-ACC guard Iman Shumpert to the NBA. Tech out-rebounded the Wolfpack, the ACC’s No. 3 rebounding-margin team, 42-31.
Slowly, a team is taking shape.
Said Gregory, in his raspy Chicago elocution, “Pavlov’s dog, you know what I mean?”
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