Richard Anderson photo
Wyoming head coach Heath Schroyer talks to his team during a drill in a recent practice session.
By Richard Anderson
Wyoming Sports.org
Editor’s note: Wyoming Sports.org sat down with Wyoming head men’s basketball coach Heath Schroyer this week and discussed the differences between his first season and the beginning of his second season. In the first of two stories, Schroyer talks about how he broke the program down off the court.
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It’s the little things that Heath Schroyer hopes brings big rewards to the Cowboy basketball program in the immediate future.
Now in his second year at the helm, Schroyer broke the program down and basically started from scratch. There were plenty of lumps taken along the way, but they were trials and tribulations that Schroyer said he envisioned and worked through.
For the Cowboys, it went back to team meetings, to how they present themselves, to how they go out on the floor, even to what they wore in practice. A big part of the transformation of the program was to just bring the team together.
“Last year, it was an endless process working on those things,” Schroyer. “Now, we’re not dealing with those things. Guys get along lot better. Our staff has done a good job of bringing players in, not only with talent level to compete in this conference, but that they get along and they mesh. A lot of people don’t think about those things in the recruiting process, but who can fit into the locker room and who can’t. If it comes down to two players and both of them are pretty comparable, we’re going to go with the guy who can add to the locker room. We’ve done that with all of the guys who we have been able to get here in the last 18 months. All of the guys get along, all of them mesh together.”
Schroyer wanted to see changes in the classroom, changes in how they acted and performed in practice. He said he wanted to see changes in how hard do they work in the weight room.
Again, it was the little things.
“We lift at 7 a.m. We all wear the same gear. All of those things, we’re not having to go back and re-teach,” he said. “It is becoming the culture. The accountability is becoming the culture and how hard we work is becoming the culture. From here on out, in my opinion, that’s when we start to build things and build a program that will hopefully get us back into the NCAA Tournament and be a team that can compete in this league. We’re excited about taking the next step in the process.”
Sounds easy. It wasn’t. Schroyer inherited problems in many areas when he took over from Steve McClain on March 23, 2007.
Schroyer and his staff basically had to do a little house cleaning. Some players didn’t adhere to those changes and they are gone. Some hesitated, some grabbed a hold of the changes and ran with it. It was nothing that Schroyer didn’t expect to face.
“It’s normal whenever there is a coaching change and taking over a situation like this one was in, you are always going to have certain individuals who maybe don’t want to conform or conform on the surface,” he said. “This year our guys have really bought in. They understand why they do what we do. Last year was a whole year of selling them of what we are trying to do.
“Here is the forest amongst the trees. At some point, this is what is going to happen. It feels good. As a head coach, I feel a lot better going into year two than I did going into year one. These guys, I love being around them. As funny as that sounds, sometimes that is hard. I enjoy the guys, I know they enjoy each other. I think they enjoy the coaches as well.”
Schroyer’s toughest sell: Everything.
“I’d like to think that we are very detail oriented in all of the things that we do,” Schroyer said. “That was the biggest thing. The pace of which we, as a coaching staff, work. The pace of which we want the program to work -- in all facets. Just the amount of rpms that each of the individuals have to run at that, I think, at the University of Wyoming, is the only way for us to be successful. We have to work harder than everybody else at every facet of the program.”
The facet that put the program in peril was academics. Wyoming men’s basketball was in dire straights in the classroom. When athletics director Tom Burman hired Schroyer, that was first and foremost on his fix-it list.
Last spring, the Academic Progress Rate for men's basketball -- as expected -- was down released from the 2006-07 academic year. UW's APR for men's basketball was 864, which was down from 881 for the 2005-2006 academic year.
Since then, Schroyer said the program has made good strides in the classroom, but it is not out of the woods yet.
“We were obviously in a very big hole, but we’re fighting our way out; our heads are above water now,” Schroyer said. “Our seniors are on track to graduate in the very foreseeable future. When I got here, that wasn’t the case. All of our guys stayed for summer school. It’s about accountability in the class room. Our staff has done a phenomenal job. Molly Moore, Tom Burman, from top to bottom, they have been very supportive of a lot of changes that I wanted to make in that component of the program.”
In Schroyer’s opinion, all of his players can now compete in the classroom. By redshirting players and taking Division I transfers and redshirting them, Schroyer said it enables them to buy us some time and get these guys close to graduating.
“As bad as I want to fix the basketball part, I have to do it at the same time to fix the academics,” he said. “We were at a point where we were going to lose postseason play, we were going to lose additional scholarships. Now we have come a long, long way in both of those areas in 18 months.”
Schroyer said that the academics problem wasn’t broke over night and it wasn’t going to be fixed over night. But through keeping players here all summer to manage the classes the players take, he said all of them are going towards degrees. Schroyer said those are all things that accountability-wise, that they had to get done.
“Getting them to class and our study sessions are very intense,” he added. “Our guys are in study hall Monday through Thursday and then Sunday night; five nights a week we’re in there. As coaches, we hold them accountable. That was one of the reasons I was hired. In the next year or so, we’ll be back to where we want to be academically.”
With the rise of popularity with the Cowgirl basketball program under Joe Legerski, the Cowboys have been thought of in the past by some as a little aloof within the community and on campus. That is another area where Schroyer has sought to improve. Like many aspects, he said that too goes back to recruiting.
“We wanted and recruited people who wanted to be here and about what we’re trying to be about,” he said. “We want to be team players who support the University of Wyoming. We’re not transparent, we’re not just our own entity. We’re part of a bigger piece here and that is a university community. We encourage it and I am glad. It is important for their overall being and it is important for us to be a component of the university community not just the basketball team.
“We have guys who are really good guys and they want to be out there. These are good kids. Whenever people get a chance to talk to Brandon Ewing, talk to Adam Wadell, talk to Mikhail Linskens, you’ll find out. I have gotten a lot of e-mails saying they are really good kids. They’re not perfect, but no 18- or 22-year old is perfect. More than that, they are really good ambassadors to the university and to the state of Wyoming. When you win games and you do it the right way and you do it with good people who are talented -- you have to have some talent -- when you do it with the quality of kids that we have in the program, it just makes it all the better.”
As the Cowboys are just a few days into official practices, the Wyoming coaching staff can now spend more time on basketball and getting the team competitive on the court.
That brings a smile to Schroyer’s face.
“Before you can win games or even think about that, you have to change your culture,” Schroyer said. “Right now, I feel like the culture has changed. Now we’re in a situation where we have to maintain the culture, which is a lot different than changing it. I feel better about it.”
The day he got to Laramie, Schroyer said that they had a lot of work to do. That hasn’t changed.
“We’ve accomplished a lot, but it takes a while for staff, for the university and for players to realize the attention to detail and the sense of urgency, the rpms that you have to run at be competitive,” he said. “We have a lot more work left.”
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Up next: Schroyer discusses the changes made on the court.
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