Down three points with five seconds remaining in Monday’s eventual loss to Robert Morris, the Bobcats needed a 3-pointer to tie the game.
Last season, the choice would have been easy — give the ball to Tommy Freeman, the school’s all-time leading 3-point shooter.
This year, the decision may have been more difficult as the game ended in a failed attempt off the hands of point guard D.J. Cooper.
Despite the loss of proven scorers Freeman and DeVaughn Washington from a year ago, coach John Groce insists that his squad has adapted well without those players, and their early success seems to back him up.
With 12 wins in their first 14 games, the Bobcats have five more victories now than at the same point last season.
Groce said that this year’s squad has picked up the extra wins not through one player, but through many.
“We’re a deeper team this year, playing 10 guys,” Groce said. “The coaches’ job is to identify what the strengths of each guy are and what they bring to the table.
“No one player is DeVaughn and no one player is Tommy. Each guy is different. We’ve done a pretty good job of identifying all of the roles of our guys and trying to get them to play to their strengths.”
Without Washington’s presence, juniors Ivo Baltic and Reggie Keely have picked up the slack. Both players are averaging about 10 points per game.
Critical to each team’s success, Groce said, is the ability for each player to recognize his role, and buy into it.
“Sometimes roles change with the loss of a guy or addition of a guy,” he said. “I don’t make those decisions until after fall practice. I want to watch our team practice 30 or 40 times before I identify roles.”
One player who has seen a bit of a change in his role is sophomore guard Nick Kellogg.
With Freeman gone, Kellogg is now the leading 3-point shooter on the team and has handled the role well. Kellogg has shot 49 percent from long range so far this season.
“I feel like that’s my role,” Kellogg said. “Coach has said that if I get an open shot, I take it. I always look for my shot and really I just do whatever I can to help the team win. If that’s shooting 3’s, setting screens or diving on loose balls, whatever it is, I’m fine with that.”
But the burden of replacing Freeman’s production has not fallen solely on Kellogg. Groce stressed that almost every guy on the floor for the Bobcats is
capable of knocking down the outside shot.
Although they struggled to make shots Monday night, both Kellogg and Groce said each player has had success fitting into their roles.
“A big part of our success is the fact that we’ve had so many guys excel in their roles,” Groce said. “The last two years we played so many young guys that we didn’t have enough information, so it took us a while to identify roles.
“In this case, we’ve got a lot of returners and we’ve got a good idea of what our guys’ strengths are and what roles to give them so that our team can succeed.”
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