Practice started with Jankovich working with the team on rotations of zone defense. This was the second day in a row Jank worked with the team on this.
Before practice things were pretty loose. Jankovich worked with Shake Milton on how to come off a screen on offense and then Milton walked over and laughed with the other freshmen. Meanwhile Carlos Daniel and Jordan Tolbert were competing in a three-point contest that had Nic Moore laughing.
Scouts from the Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks were at practice.
Also in attendance was the coach of Team Texas Elite 16U, which featured 2017 SMU offers CJ Roberts and Robert Brown and 2018 prospect Chris Smith this past summer.
Semi Ojeleye was working on his hook shot before practice and used it successfully during scrimmage. Semi had a nice block of a Markus Kennedy layup during practice and on the next possession when Semi drove to the basket Kennedy and Jordan Tolbert had no choice but to clobber him or give up the layup.
Kennedy was an hour late to practice due to class. He hit a three pointer in scrimmage and was encouraging Sedrick Barefield when Larry Brown called out the freshman point guard. Kennedy showed a nice spin move in the post on one play and then on the next stole the ball from Milton after a defensive rebounded and put it into the bucket. There were a couple plays where Kennedy grabbed a long defensive board and started running the fast break himself. He passed the ball well when running up the court for a man his size.
One of the coolest moments of practice was when the coaches were having trouble getting a new play across to the team. Nic Moore told the coaches to let him explain and walked the team through the play and explained exactly what needed to be done.
Keith Frazier had the best practice I've seen from him at SMU. It wasn't necessarily that he was playing so well but it was that he was engaged. Even after he made a shot he asked the coaches if he ran the play correctly and he was thanking his teammates after each assist. He played better defense against Milton and had a putback dunk that even got some claps out of Larry Brown.
Despite the light mood through parts of practice, the guys still went hard. Milton, Jordan Tolbert and Ben Moore all got into a dogpile on the floor going after a loose ball.
