Luke Winn at SI.com has a Q&A with Aaron Gray. A little about the Buffalo game, breaking a backboard and ankle in highschool, and getting ready for Wisconsin.
LW: You’re shooting a pretty stellar 64 percent this year from the field, as opposed to 52.6 percent last season. Where are you picking up that 12 percent? New moves? Easier baskets?
AG: I think I’ve always had good touch around the basket, and always been able to shoot it a little bit. The reason the percentage was down last year was due to me not being in as good a shape as I am this year. I’ve continued to work a lot on my strength and conditioning in the offseason. It’s funny, because I took easier shots last year — far more of them right inside, near the basket, and I’d rarely ever fade out to 10 or 15 feet. This year I’m out to 10, 15, even 17 feet and my percentage has risen.
LW: Did you have some kind of specific training regiment that resulted in the new, fitter Aaron Gray?
AG: Ronald Ramon‘s pops actually came out and put us through a boot camp for the last six weeks of the summer, to get us ready for the season. We’d wake up at around 7 a.m., and start doing a bunch of conditioning and agility work, running hills, running on the track, and doing cone drills for lateral movement. Then we’d work the basketball camps here for the little kids, which ran from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. — and we’d lift weights during the lunch break. After camp, we’d do all of our on-the-court stuff, with everyone working together on their ballhandling, shooting and everything else.
That “boot camp” is going to take legend status at this rate.
hopefully they worked on lay-up drills for aaron at that boot camp…
And I’ve said it before that Buffalo played the half of their lives, but if that team shows up even half the time in MAC play, they’ll be in the tournament.
So, I don’t think it’s a stupid reason at all. I say kudos to Jamie Dixon for this year’s sked.
Actually Luke Winn said it best when he said: “LW: That had to be a pretty wild scene in Buffalo, though. It’s not very often that a major-conference team — much less the No. 2 squad in the country — travels to a good mid-major’s home gym.”
Yeah JD can’t coach, get 5 star recurits and to top it off he scheduels a tough game like UB!
I’d say JD is much more brilliant than stupid.
AG: It made a real exciting atmosphere. It was the third-largest crowd in the history of that arena [Alumni Arena], I think the fans saw a pretty good game. Of course they were doing all of their chants, and making derogatory remarks, but that’s fine — our motto has always been, ‘They don’t chant at the bad players.’ ”
Yeah not often but for some stupid reason Pitt did it this year……………..