Topic: DAILY MAIL: MARSHALL BASKETBALL: Herd, D’Antoni look to tap Europe for talent

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HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – Bringing in a European recruit — as Marshall men’s basketball coach Dan D’Antoni did last month in signing 6-foot-5 Serbian guard Aleksa Nikolic — is a bit of an anomaly in terms of Thundering Herd men’s hoops. When Nikolic arrives, he’ll be the first European player on the roster since the 2003-04 season.

There have been several international players since then, like Yous Mbao of Senegal, Canadian J.P. Kambola and Dago Pena, who was born in the Dominican Republic. Yet not since 6-10 Estonian center Ardo Armpalu was a senior in 2003-04 has Marshall included a European on its roster.

Signing Nikolic might be a sign that the trend is shifting. With D’Antoni’s coaching style, one that calls for all five players on the floor to have skills and shooting touch, the Herd could find itself gaining even more of an international flavor.

While that style of basketball may be labeled more European, D’Antoni said that type of play already thrived in Huntington when he and his younger brother Mike played for the Herd.

“We predated that scheme when we were at Marshall, because all our bigs stayed outside and shot,” he said. “George Stone was a power forward and he was shooting at 20 feet. We played with skill. Russell Williams was Mike’s center, 6-5, athletic, going all over the place, playing all the parts of the game.”

In D’Antoni’s experience – especially his stint from 2005-14 as an assistant for his brother with the Phoenix Suns, New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers – he’s seen how European players have grown into the mold that D’Antoni remembers from his playing days. He’s experienced it firsthand with players like Danilo Gallinari of Italy, a 6-10 small forward D’Antoni coached with the Knicks, and Pau Gasol of Spain, a 7-footer with 20-foot shooting range that D’Antoni coached with the Lakers.

With those skills drilled into European players at a young age, D’Antoni said the continent is a good place to establish recruiting ties.

“Europeans teach that way, they teach the skills that way,” D’Antoni said. “They teach all of basketball, not just put your back to the basket, stand at the block and play. We want to reestablish that.

“They do develop them over there like that,” he continued. “They teach the big men skills and they teach them to move the ball and not play one-on-one. The ball’s moved and you get shots through ball movement. That’s kind of the way we’re going to play.”

He’s also assembled his staff to help in that regard. Assistant Scott Rigot has a varied coaching background, with stops at Kentucky, South Carolina and Hawaii among others. After leaving Duquesne in 2010, he also spent some time working overseas. He spent last year as a consultant in Israel and the year before that coaching at a university in China.

Not only does Rigot know what foreign basketball players can add to a roster, he also knows some of the hurdles that can come with welcoming a player whose first language isn’t English. It’s the nuances of communication, he said, that both sides must learn about the other.

“When you’re coaching kids and can speak their language, you can read body language,” Rigot said. “You can read head nods. But when someone’s from a different culture, they have a whole different set of expressions you may not be familiar with. Sometimes you can leave thinking you’ve made some great teaching points and they may not pick them up.”

One of the most successful teams Rigot has coached was a United Nations of basketball. He was on the staff of the 2001-02 Hawaii team that set a single-season school record with 27 wins and was the last Rainbow Warriors team to reach the NCAA tournament. That roster included a player from Montenegro, one from Serbia, two from Canada, one from Lithuania, one from Israel, one from South Africa and one from France.

Teaching a style of basketball where even the biggest players are skilled can make up for any lack of traditional dominant center, Rigot said. A coach could search four years for that player and never find him. Rigot said it’s easier to find a bigger player with perimeter abilities and polish those.

“I think the way Dan coaches is more conducive to what you’re seeing in Europe and what you’re seeing now,” Rigot said. “If everybody had a Shaq, they’d all play that way. But when you don’t have one and you have to find a way to survive without having a big guy in there, Dan’s style is going to prove you can win with guys who are skilled and just know how to play. I think that’s what he’s going to bring to the table.”

Contact sportswriter Derek Redd at derek.redd@dailymailwv.com or 304-348-1712. His blog is at blogs.charlestondailymail.com/marshall. Follow him on Twitter @derekredd.

http://www.charlestondailymail.com/article/20140601/DM03/140609929/1311

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