sorta OT: Oluoma Nnamaka interview

[rocky_warrior]

Was just looking up Nnamaka information for the wiki, and found this interview - with some interesting tidbits on practice at MU and playing/practicing with Wade.

http://www.kh-personaltraining.com/nnamaka.asp

Oluoma Nnamaka ,
Professional basketball player

Oluoma Nnamaka is the brightest shining star in Swedish basketball. He played college basketball with somebody named Dwayne Wade, was elected the best defensive player in German bundesliga when he played for Bonn and is crashing the boards right now with ferocity in Sicily, Italia. I sat down with him at Café Linne in Uppsala when he was on a quick visit in his hometown and we ate the biggest “semla’s” in town. We discussed a bit about training for basketball, Dwayne Wade and even Sallen basket. So here we go…

Let’s talk a bit about your college days as Marquette. What was a normal training day like in college?

During the off-season we had like first individual workouts with a coach that was really tough. We had only like four guys always at the same time in practice. We would play one on one and all these different drills with high speed and the coach was just yelling all the time. They tried to make us really tired but still do lots of different drills while you were tired. After that we would lift with the whole team the American way - really tough. Then in the evening we would have the conditioning with the team. We run like animals. We had to run the 4 times up and back drill in 22 secs, 17 times from sideline to sideline in one minute, etc drills and we did lots of them. People were just throwing up all the time in practices. They even had buckets there for throwing up in practices…it was crazy! I really don’t miss that time at all!!

I bet…how about the toughest training session ever?

That would be at Marquette when somebody had done something stupid in school or something that coach wasn’t too happy about. We had often punishment practices. First of all the guy who had unnatural carnal knowledgeed up had to sit in the stands and watch everybody else suffer….we run like 30-40 sets of these different line drills. It was sick, lots of guys were just throwing up. And if somebody couldn’t run for example the four times up and back in 22 seconds drill in time we had to run it again. Lots of guys were diving to get the time and coaches just seemed to enjoy it all and laugh at players. After that you just wanna kill the guy who had done something wrong…

How about Dwayne Wade? He was doing the same stuff as well?

I remember one time we had one of these individual workouts with four guys and the head coach was there. It was always tough with the assistant coaches as well but with the head coach it just got crazy. So one time he was pushing Dwayne so hard and screaming and yelling all kinds of nasty stuff to him so Dwayne started hyperventilating or something in practice and almost couldn’t breath! He was all teary and couldn’t breath, it was terrible, you know… you could see right away that Dwayne was extremely talented and just killing everybody in practice so coach was extra hard on him.

So how was it playing with him - did you kick his ass?

Haha….in one on one yeah right…. I was lucky because I played position 4 and he played 2-3 and we were both starters so we often played in the same team so I didn’t get embarrassed that often. But I mean, nobody could guard him, he was already back then dunking at will in practices. He’s so strong that he can post you up too. He’s got really good natural strength and a great body for basketball.

[PuertoRicanNightmare]

I'm guessing they're not going to show that article to any recruits.

[NYWarrior]

I dunno.  The descriptions of practice, punishment, puking....honestly, nothing in those descriptions surprise me.  Though adding puke buckets is cool. I used to hate mopping that up.

[Wade for President]

Would LOVE to have a guy like Oluoma on this team.  Good hands, strong upper body, 100% hustle, and decent agility for a power forward.  All are glaring weaknesses in our bigs.

That might scare of a couple of recruits, but the otherside of that is that Crean demands respect, discipline, and hardwork.  Conditioning is everything in college basketball.

[mu03eng]

I'm not even remotely surprised at that article, and PRN I think you would be surprised how crazy any D-I sports practices are.  Hell my club soccer team practices were almost bad as Oluoma describes.  The soccer practices at Marquette were just awlful at times.....people throwing up everywhere.  You have to do these sorts of things to play at a high D-I level.  Recruits know that coming in.

[AlumKCof93]

I loved Nnamaka, he was a very good role player for MU and the kind of guy I would love to have on our current team.
That said, his comments are alarming.  While its easy to say these tough practices occur on every team, I don't think we should be that dismissive of the comments.  The tranfer rate under Crean as well as his teams penchant for wearing down as the season goes on indicates that Crean is too demanding on the players.  T

[mu03eng]

I loved Nnamaka, he was a very good role player for MU and the kind of guy I would love to have on our current team.
That said, his comments are alarming.  While its easy to say these tough practices occur on every team, I don't think we should be that dismissive of the comments.  The tranfer rate under Crean as well as his teams penchant for wearing down as the season goes on indicates that Crean is too demanding on the players.  T

Where is the evidence that the teams wear down late in the season anymore than other teams? 

Also you are looking at someone from Marquette talk about Marquette's practices.....who are you comparing those to, to say if they are better or worse than average?  You bring up the transfer rate.....what evidence do you have that the transfer rate is because of hard practices??

In the end, do I think things could be too hard especially at the end of the season....maybe.  But I can't even remotely draw that conclusion knowing what I do about collegiate athletics in general and seeing no direct evidence to support the Crean is too hard theory.

[MarquetteVol]

If you've played competitive sports, this is not that unusual. Granted, it's not the way guys like Steve Lavin get things done, but it's certainly not alarming. I bet Kevin O'Neill's practices were at least similar and maybe worse.