Sunday the Florida A&M men’s basketball team (0-2) will be facing the Arizona State Sun Devils (1-0).
“Even though we are off to a rough start there has been a lot of a positive,” says Coach Clemon Johnson.
During the last game he noticed that when playing man to man defense the Rattlers cut a 29 point lead to 11. With that in mind he used the 2 days of practice this week to implement the new defensive strategy. Also he has been working on implementing a freelance offense that is based off of reading and reacting rather than having a set play. With these changes the Rattlers offense should create easy baskets for guards like Muhammad Abdul–Aleem who had a team high 20 points in the last game against Stetson.
Muhammad a third year transfer English education student from Atlanta is excited about the team’s prospects this season.
“The team is built for a run n gun offense,” said Muhammed.
D’Andre Bullard, a second year business administration student from Orlando likes the new offense.
”We getting better each day” said Bullard. “The offense is running smoother”.
Markee Teal, a transfer criminal justice student from Ocala, is one of the forwards for the Rattlers. Teal we have to deal with the size of the Sun Devils as the starting power forward for the team
The Sun Devils have centers Jordan Bachynski, standing 7’2” and Ruisan Pateev who is 7’0”. Last game Markee managed to pull down a team high 7 rebounds. Markee is an undersized PF/C at 6’7 but he is ready to battle.
Markee said the Sun Devils would feel his wrath.
The Sun Devils are coming into this game after winning their season opener against Central Arkansas. Bachynski is coming off of a hot game where he nearly had a triple-double and set a school record with 9 blocks.
As practice began to wrap up Johnson stressed to the players to “stay loose”. As a former NBA player, he knows how much stress travelling can put on your body. The team had to catch a bus at 6 a.m. to make a trip that would last over a day.
The Rattlers play Sunday at 2 p.m.