The Boys’ basketball team finds themselves in full swing of their season. After a strong showing in the Kurland-Schnurr Thanksgiving Tournament and tough battles with rivalsNiles North and Maine East, the NWN had the chance to talk with head coach Bob Williams to chat on how he feels the season is going thus far.
NWN: What have you seen from the team thus far?
Williams: The good things I’ve seen are I think we’re playing with great energy, I think we’re making good effort on defense. Fundamentally, we’ve gotten better on defense each game. Offensively, we’ve shown some good skills in the full court–when things are going up and down the floor a little bit, we’re pretty effective. The concerns–and I’ve got basically two of them– would be our rebounding. There’s been a couple of games where we’ve been out-rebounded pretty severely– we’ve got to make sure we get better at that fundamentally. Then the other thing is our half-court offense. When the game slows down a bit we tend to shoot the ball too early so we’re not getting the best shots. There are things to work on, which is good. We’re feeling very positive about where we’re at.
NWN: How is the team’s size?
Williams: Size makes it easier. There’s no question if you’ve got three 6’10 guys, those kind of things are easier to do. We don’t have that, but we’ve had teams before that have overcome that with proper fundamentals. For instance, rebounding, screening out well and being very aggressive after the ball. Offensively, having great movement so that the opposing team can’t just stay in the lane. You can overcome those things with having a good strategy and following it. We haven’t done that very well yet but we’re doing it better.
NWN: How do you keep everybody on the motivated to do the dirty work, such as working on rebounding?
Williams: We’ve actually adopted a word that’s kind of our team philosophy, and it’s called “ubuntu”. It’s an African word. In the villages, if they had a visitor to their villages in Africa, they would take them in and feed them, clothe them and help them in any way they could. It would be a stranger, but the reason being is that anything that makes one of us better makes all of us better. So, that whole feeling of team, we really talk a lot about what your responsibilities are to the team, we’ve got a lot of guys that really believe in that. So, I think we’ve got a lot of guys that are really doing those things because they think it’s important for the team. If the team’s going to be successful, the difficult things are going to be done. We remind each other by just saying the word.
NWN: Are there any opposing players or match-ups you are keying in on this year?
Williams: In our league– the Pontiac Tournament is arguably the best tournament in the state and for sure the best 16 team tournament in the state, it’s the longest running tournament in the United States, actually. So, it has a huge tradition and there are some great teams there. Our league is an incredible league, when you’ve got the New Triers and the Waukegans and Glenbrook South, Maine South and Evanston– they all have a great tradition in basketball– so we really can’t afford to say, “Hey, let’s circle this date on our calendar and by then let’s be ready to play.” We’ve got to be ready to play every time we go out. There’s really no time for us to really take off at all, because we would be embarassed. We don’t really look ahead at all– we look and say “What do we have to do today?” to be ready for the next day. We look at each day as an opportunity to get better.
NWN: It’s clear you run a very team-oriented system, but are there individual players this year without whom you would not be where you are?
Williams: The pat answer would be all of them, but the thing that gets noticed is scoring. We have the luxury of having senior Ahmad Gibson and senior Romeo Magloire, our two captains, and each one of them are capable of scoring big on any night. We also have two newcomers, the two sophomore kids, in Jojo Rios and Evan Hines, who can score a whole lot. We’ve got a freshman on the team who hasn’t really started playing yet but he’s making contributions in practice, in freshman Mirsad Mackic, so we’ve got a lot of different guys from every class making contributions.
NWN: Like you said, scoring will be the first thing fans notice, but does the team have an x-factor?
Williams: Odi Audisho has done a lot of hustle things and a lot of work things that the casual fan wouldn’t notice but a real fan of basketball would notice that he’s really effective defensively, he’s really effective offensively, by the way he moves he’s getting other people shots. He’s one guy that’s really done a great job. Dwayne Smith, defensively on the ball, makes a difference for us. Sachi Stephens is a newcomer to the team and he’s really been coming on and learning our system, and has been more of a contribution. Emin Ademi gives us a different dynamic offensively. That’s part of what we believe in: every person that’s on the team better be ready to play.
NWN: What is your main priority as a coach? One would assume winning games, but is there more to it?
Williams: My first priority is preparing young men to be successful in the future. We talk a lot about the the habits and the attitudes that you learn in basketball will help you be successful in anything you do. We give the kids a guidebook every year, and it’s really a guidebook to success in life if you want to take it that way. We’ve had a lot of players come back that are working in different places saying, “Coach, I’m very successful because I’m doing those things. It works. It’s crazy!” So, winning basketball games is a by-product of that. It happens because we are doing those things.
The Wolves next play on Friday, Dec. 20 as they take on the New Trier Trevians on the road at 7:00 pm.
