HUNTINGTON - On the year's biggest football weekend in the state of West Virginia, attention will be transfixed on Morgantown for the Friends of Coal Bowl.
After all, it is football season. But inside the Cam Henderson Center on Friday - and twice more on Saturday and Sunday - the Human hair extensions Herd men's basketball team welcomes back the melody of squeaking shoes and bouncing balls when it ushers in the first official practice of the season.
So what if the state is still mesmerized by the sound of popping pads and first-down cheers, for Marshall Coach Donnie Jones, this day couldn't come soon enough.
"I can't wait," he said. "We finally get a chance to coach those kids that I recruited and getting a chance to put the team together. We get to start doing a lot of teaching, and that's important."
Jones enters his third season on the Herd bench, but he's doing his best balancing act of drumming up fervor for the start of the season, which begins exactly one month from today at home against North Carolina A&T. At the same time, he wants to stifle expectations for a team that features six newcomers and nine freshmen and sophomores.
"I don't want to place any undue expectations or pressures on a young team," Jones said. "People will be disappointed if you don't go where you are expected to go."
Most preseason publications have Marshall picked fifth in Conference USA, which is on the cusp of the NCAA/NIT bubble. Last season, the Herd was selected sixth in the league in the preseason and finished in that spot, but had a losing record.
"I really don't pay attention to that because it's other people's perception of what you have back and what other team's have back," Jones said. "We are really young, but could it be our year? We hope so."
Jones will begin to uncover the unknown Friday at 5 p.m., which is the first minute allowable under NCAA rules basketball teams can conduct an official practice.
Patek Philippe Replica WatchesIn the offseason, Jones could only hold three 40-minute workouts with a handful of players each week, so the Herd coach hasn't been able to evaluate his team as a group. He has no idea, for instance, how senior Tyler Wilkerson will play alongside freshman Hassan Whiteside in the frontcourt.
"The biggest thing we'll get to do is build consistency and chemistry," Jones said.
"We get to teach our program on a daily basis and really start building team unity, togetherness."
Jones said the offseason individual workouts focused more on one- on-one skill development, which is "very difficult to do in a short period of time," he said.
Marshall's first practice will last three hours. On Saturday, and hopefully with some time in between for Jones and his players to watch the Herd and Mountaineers on the gridiron, there will be two practices. The same goes for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday before an off day on Wednesday.
"We'll get in nine practices before our first day off," Jones said. "That is huge."
The Herd will return to the gym early next Thursday for a full practice before participating in that evening's "Thundering Herd Madness," an event for fans to meet the players, watch slam dunk and 3-point competitions, and showcase the team in a short 5-on-5 scrimmage.
Most programs use the event to kickoff the se
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