New coach Eric Olen puts a bow on summer workouts for Lobo hoops

Aug.

1OK, Eric Olen.

You can catch your breath now.The four-month sprint from being hired to coach the UNM Lobos, to recruiting an entirely new roster, to moving your family, to getting six weeks of summer workouts to try and implement an entire playbook is over.The new-look Lobos have concluded summer practices, and the new UNM coach seems happy with what he saw and with the surprises he didn't see."Everybody's a little different than what you see on film," Olen said of his players Friday.

"Usually there's a little bit of that, 'Oh wow,' in a positive way, and then there's usually something where it's like, 'Oh, we probably got to work on that a little more than we thought.'"It's usually a little bit of both.

I would say (this summer), there's no one where we're disappointed in their talent level or who they are as players.

We feel really good about them.

I think the staff did a fantastic job of evaluation in terms of bringing guys in because of specific attributes or things that they brought to the table that we felt our team needed."Now, the Lobo players all 14 of them get a few weeks off before fall classes start and for each of them, that means something a little bit different.

Some go home, some stick around campus.

Some workout, some don't.You see, when you play for Olen, it seems just about everything is calculated."It's more of an individual plan for each person.

We want them to have intent behind everything they're doing," Olen said.

"It's basketball, it's physicality.

Guys get dinged up.

Some guys' priority over the break is going to be rest and recovery.

(For) other guys (it) is going to be maintaining or improving their fitness and conditioning."We think about the break as a competition a little bit.

There's opportunity for competitive advantage if you do a great job over the break.

...

At the top of that list for a lot of them that get the opportunity is to spend some time with family and re-energize and really reset.

But then there's some other things while they're doing that we we expect them to do that, that we think are really important and have the opportunity to give a little bit of a competitive advantage."On scheduleUNM will play VCU on Dec.

18 in the Siegel Center in Richmond, Virginia.

The game is the second half of a home-and-home series that saw the Rams play in the Pit this past December.As for the rest of the nonconference scheduling the Lobos still are vey much involved in finalizing, Olen said he has, in fact, experienced some of what previous coaches have been saying for years about the willingness or unwillingness of quality opponents to visit the Pit."Yeah, there's some degree of 'hang up' before we could get started in the conversation," Olen admitted when asked if it was hard getting power conference opponents to even consider playing in Albuquerque."But I think that's sort of the double-edged sword of having the kind of environment that we have here.

People aren't necessarily interested in that because it's a difficult place to play, and people know it.

...

It doesn't mean we won't be able to put schedules together that would accomplish the things that we want to accomplish, but there are certainly challenges in that, and people's willingness to play here at the Pit is one of the factors."Important importsThere are several international connections on the Lobos roster.Two of them 6-foot-9 post player Tomislav Buljan of Croatia and 6-8 guard Timeo Pons of France just arrived in recent weeks, giving them a late start to workouts.In the case of Pons, who arrived just about a week ago after playing for France in the U19 FIBA Basketball World Cup, his arrival was so late in the summer workout process he did not practice this past week, but rather has been focusing on getting used to the elevation and working out individually.As for Buljan, who played in a professional league this past season in Croatia, he was certainly ready on arrival."Tomislav, I feel like did a great job of kind of coming in as everyone else had been here a few weeks and it would be easy for him to sort of fall behind or whatever.

And he was able to pretty seamlessly just jump in and keep things moving," Olen said.

"So that was really impressive on his part.

And he's been great, brings great energy, motor physicality every day."Redshirt?Not only are there no starting lineups or defined roles coming out of summer drills, there also hasn't been word of any discussion on possible redshirt seasons for any player."Oh, we haven't had any of those conversations at this stage," Olen said.

"Roles, role allocation, minutes, all that stuff will come much later in the fall as we get closer to turning the lights on."'Two way street'Olen was a guest speaker at the New Mexico High School Coaches Association last month and, by many accounts, was a hit.But he said Friday, that was only part of the relationship he hopes there will be between Lobo basketball and other coaches not just of the basketball variety around the state."Some of it is limited a little bit by time and schedule and those kind of things, but we've had high school coaches come to practice some who were at the event that I spoke at," Olen said.

"I don't think that's a one-way street where I go and speak at the at the high school clinic, and then it's just them learning something about what we do.

I think that that goes both ways."Olen said he and his staff will absolutely "steal" any good ideas they see on the basketball court from any level, including when they are out and about at high school games."There's great coaches at every level of all sports, and it's not like you have to just look at college basketball or professional basketball to get good ideas," Olen said.

"I think that there's a lot of different ways to do this, and there's a lot of creative, smart coaches out there.

And from talking to some of the guys here in New Mexico, I'm pretty confident there's some of those here in this state that we can learn from.".

This article has been shared from the original article on yahoo, here is the link to the original article.