In one of the great media rants of all time, former Philadelphia 76’er guard Allen Iverson left no doubt he wasn’t a fan of practicing.
In fact, Iverson said in that now famous rant, “How the hell am I supposed to make my teammates better in practice”?
I guess when you’re an NBA superstar you can pretty much dictate where you choose to exercise your efforts.
And for Iverson, it was never in practice.
For Oregon head coach Dan Lanning, he looks at practice in a much different light. If you don’t up your tempo and effort in practice, you’ll never see the field during games.
It’s that mindset and mantra that is paying dividends in games and it’s been evident with the Ducks during their last two games against Eastern Washington and BYU.
“We’ve said for us it’s about chopping wood and carrying water” explained Lanning on Monday evening during his weekly media briefing.
“There’s work to be done and if you want results you have to keep chopping wood and keep carrying water and you gotta do that at practice for that to show up in a game.
“The last few weeks our practices have been really good and it’s shown up and carried over in the game and I think we have to see the same thing this week.”
And the Ducks will certainly have to practice at a high level this week to have any success with what awaits them in Pullman as they prepare to take on the Washington State juggernaut (offense) which is aptly labeled the ‘cougar raid’ attack and similarly emulates the Mike Leach ‘air raid’ attack.
Lanning understands the challenge waiting for him in the Palouse, but the ‘air raid’ attack isn’t something completely unfamiliar to him during his coaching tenure.
He’s seen it before coaching in the SEC.
“They are,…they’re more balanced” said Lanning when asked to offer up his thoughts on the Cougars high-octane offense.
“When I played teams like this in the past you kinda carry one defense and it’s what you have to play the entire week and it’s usually a little unique for that. That being said, they still have ‘eleven’ personnel, they have twelve personnel.
“They use the tight-end, so it’s more to prepare for. They do a lot more but they still can create some of those issues that the ‘air raid’ can create. Not as much time can be devoted to one thing in practice and I think that’s a challenge.
“They do a good job of mixing it up and their tight end certainly has caught a couple of passes this year,..he does a good job.”
MEDIA BRIEFING; DAN LANNING TALKS ABOUT FACING WASHINGTON STATE