UTEP Men’s Basketball Team holds first practice of season

With the exhibition opener a little over three weeks away, the UTEP men’s basketball team conducted its first official practice of the 2015-16 season on Monday afternoon at the Foster Stevens Center.

“I think everybody is excited,” coach Tim Floyd said. “It’s always a long offseason. We’re all eager. We know we’ve got a lot of questions, but we’re going to try to get some questions answered.”

UTEP has a lot of new faces – eight, to be exact, plus Trey Touchet and Terry Winn who are relatively new after redshirting their first year in El Paso. The Miners are still trying to figure out what kind of team they are going to be, although according to the players it will be a speedy one.

“That’s probably accurate,” Floyd said of the perception that this year’s team will be quicker. “We’re hopeful that our guards are going to be good players. All college teams have to have them. For this team, given what we lost a year ago, to really be a very competitive team we’re going to have to have exceptional guard play from some of our newcomers.”

The Miners’ leading returning scorer is Earvin Morris at 11.0 points per game. He is in his second season at UTEP after transferring from Tallahassee Community College, and could be significantly improved as a senior.

“Well, you’d hope,” Floyd said. “He’s been around a year and generally guys are better the second year than they are the first. He played an awful lot of minutes last year … really the only guy that’s returning who played a lot if you don’t count Hooper Vint’s seven-game stretch when Matt [Willms] was hurt. Hooper is a fifth year senior. We’re very hopeful that some of the redshirting that we’ve done in order to establish a program is going to ultimately pay off this year. We felt like we were in great shape had we not lost Vince Hunter, not lost Omega [Harris, who is academically ineligible for the first semester but practicing], not lost Matt, in terms of having that program established where you lose three and you’ve got three more coming in. We’re going to have to speed up the timetable a little bit on some of these freshmen.”

Two key ingredients in the backcourt are Touchet and Jake Flaggert, who both sat out the 2014-15 season. Flaggert played in 30 games as a freshman.

“I think both of those guys are so excited after laying out last year,” Floyd said. “We’ve also got Lee Moore [Wallace State Community College transfer] who did not play last year, and Dominic Artis [Oregon transfer] who did not play last year. These guys are going to be new to competition. I think they are all really good players though. This might be our strongest group of perimeter players that we’ve had since we’ve been here.”

That includes British import Josh McSwiggan, who is sidelined for at least the early going.

“He has grown, really, since we saw him in April. He might be a legitimate 6-7 and a half now,” Floyd said. “He had knee surgery this morning . He had his meniscus repaired. It’s a little worse than what they thought. He had to have part of it removed. I don’t know exactly what the timetable is for his return. We’re hopeful that it will be before the start of the season.”

The list of frontcourt returnees includes Willms, who has made 32 starts in two years. Willms was originally slated to undergo foot surgery on Sept. 10, but now he’s back.

“Matt is going to work cautiously this season,” Floyd said. “We’re going to look at him playing limited practice minutes. We’re going to look at him having limited minutes in games. Any flare ups, it will be an immediate surgery. He may practice once a week and it would be very, very limited in terms of what he would do. We’re not a very deep team. He couldn’t stomach the thought of not being able to play at all. He’s going to ultimately have to have the surgery on his foot. That more than likely will occur, at least hopefully will occur, after the season and not during.”

The Miners also have talented freshmen Brodricks Jones, Christian Romine and Paul Thomas up front, and the burly 6-7, 230-pound Winn.

“Terry really hasn’t played in two years,” Floyd said. “I don’t know what his makeup will be. I don’t know who he’s going to be. He’s going to have to establish those things. Can he be the guy that this team can count on day in and day out? We’ll find out. He’s capable of rebounding. He’s capable of guarding somebody. He’s capable of scoring it in the paint. Hopefully he’ll give himself an opportunity to do those things.”

With 17 players on the roster, including walk-ons Tevin Caldwell, Tedric Johnson, Victor Mbachu and Ivan Venegas, the coaches will have some evaluating to do before settling on a rotation this winter.

“Guys tend to sort that out themselves,” Floyd said. “This team will let us know who those eight or nine are going to be based on what happens starting today . We expect a great practice today , and I think the real key to any team is how we will be practicing in February and who we’re going to be able to rely on. So much of this stuff is makeup and who guys really are. It’s really easy to look good in a pickup game where nobody is guarding anybody. I didn’t watch [the pickup games], it was too frustrating to watch. But we’re going to get down to trying to learn how to really play basketball and share it and move it and take care of it, all those things that are important.”

It should be a versatile team.

“You will see some four guard lineups, but you’re also going to see some lineups with two bigs,” Floyd said. “We’re going to have to be able to rebound it, and one of the primary questions that this team has is going to be our ability to rebound the ball. I question that at this point. Hopefully somebody will show us that they can. If it’s a guard, then we’ll be excited about that.

“This is a brand-new team basically. If you count Matt Willms, we’ve lost six of our top seven from last year. That being said, I’m excited about seeing all of them because we know that we’re going to have to rely on all of them.”

Fans can get their first look at the 2015-16 Miners in the free Orange and White Scrimmage on Saturday , Oct. 24 at 1:30 p.m. in the Haskins Center.