Men’s Bas­ket­ball Re­mains Op­ti­mistic De­spite In­con­sis­tent Sched­ule

MISHAWAKA -- Coach Steve Drabyn, the Bethel Uni­ver­sity men’s bas­ket­ball coach, learned a lot about his team and their Cross­roads League op­po­nents last sea­son. Like most coaches com­ing into their sec­ond sea­son with a team, Drabyn said he has a bet­ter idea of what to ex­pect. 

Drabyn coached Bethel to 15-0 start last sea­son, tied for the sec­ond-best start in Bethel men’s bas­ket­ball pro­gram his­tory. But once Bethel started con­fer­ence play, re­al­ity set in. 

“I was just blown away [by] how good our league is,” Drabyn said. “It’s just, from an of­fen­sive skill stand­point to the coach­ing, [the Cross­roads league] is re­ally good.” 

Bethel ended last sea­son with a 22-11 record, with 10 of those losses com­ing from con­fer­ence games. The ex­pe­ri­ence in­spired Drabyn and his coach­ing staff to change a few strate­gies. 

First, the coach­ing staff changed the type of play­ers they wanted to re­cruit. Drabyn said they also have changed the way they are coach­ing. The team is putting more em­pha­sis on im­prov­ing their de­fense dur­ing prac­tices. 

“We’re just try­ing to get bet­ter every day,” Drabyn said. “If all 15 in­di­vid­ual play­ers, and us coaches … can all try to get a lit­tle bit bet­ter each day, that cu­mu­la­tive ef­fect over time is go­ing to pay huge div­i­dends.” 

Bethel’s de­fense proved to be a weak spot early on in their sea­son opener against In­di­ana Uni­ver­sity North­west. Bethel al­lowed IU North­west to score 56 points in the paint through­out the game. Drabyn said his team strug­gled to guard the ball and force tough shots out­side the paint. 

With nearly 12 min­utes left in the first half, IU North­west held a 21-point lead over Bethel. 

“We played a team that was a tough guard for us,” Drabyn said. “They played a kind of … one-on-one iso­la­tion type stuff, put us in a lot of tough de­fen­sive po­si­tions and they made plays. They made shots.” 

The other chal­lenge IU North­west pre­sented was that they played all five smaller play­ers. Bethel typ­i­cally starts with one larger, post player along­side smaller for­wards and guards. As a re­sult, the post player could not be uti­lized as much, and the team had to some­what im­pro­vise. 

But they were able to close the gap and re­gain the lead with 8:51 re­main­ing in the game. Ac­cord­ing to the Bethel Ath­let­ics web­site, Se­nior Tre­Vion Crews led Bethel with 24 points, nine re­bounds and three steals. Se­nior Zac Owens fol­lowed be­hind with 19 points and five as­sists. 

Bethel squeaked by with the win, 93-88. 

Go­ing into their sec­ond game against Lour­des Uni­ver­sity, Drabyn said they knew one of Lour­des’ strengths is scor­ing in the paint. Bethel As­sis­tant Coach Mark Pols­grove found a weak­ness in Lour­des’ scout­ing re­port from last year. 

“[In] all of their losses from the pre­vi­ous year, they scored less 40 points in the paint,” Drabyn said. “So, that was a huge goal for us go­ing in. If we could hold them un­der 40 points in the paint, we would have a good chance to win the game.” 

Pols­grove said the coach­ing staff also put a huge em­pha­sis on win­ning one-on-one matchups. As a re­sult, Bethel only al­lowed Lour­des to score 32 points in the paint. 

Crews and Owens both were able to put up their sec­ond con­sec­u­tive, high-scor­ing per­for­mances. Bethel ended up with its sec­ond win, 87-81. 

Shortly there­after, one of the Bethel play­ers tested pos­i­tive for the COVID-19 virus. Once Bethel’s next three op­po­nents heard about the one pos­i­tive case, the three teams im­me­di­ately can­celled. 

“I was a lit­tle sur­prised by that be­cause we’re able to play if we have less than three [play­ers] pos­i­tive,” Drabyn said. “If we have three play­ers test pos­i­tive, then we’re not al­lowed to play.” 

The Cross­roads League and Bethel Uni­ver­sity are al­low­ing the men’s bas­ket­ball to com­pete if they have less than three play­ers test pos­i­tive. How­ever, some schools are en­forc­ing stricter rules. 

Bethel could not play un­til Sat­ur­day, Nov. 14. Five Bethel play­ers ended up test­ing pos­i­tive for COVID-19, while three ad­di­tional play­ers had to quar­an­tine. At one point, only six play­ers were cleared to prac­tice as a team. 

Since three of the six play­ers who could prac­tice had had COVID-19 within the last month, they prac­ticed in part­ners. A player who had not yet con­tracted COVID-19 part­nered with a player who had. Each group worked on shoot­ing, con­di­tion­ing and free throws at their own bas­ket. 

Be­sides one player, every­one from quar­an­tine was cleared in time to play against Cor­ner­stone Uni­ver­sity. De­spite the chal­lenges of so­cial dis­tanc­ing and quar­an­ti­ning, Pols­grove thought some play­ers ac­tu­ally im­proved. 

“They were still able to work out on their own,” Pols­grove said, speak­ing of the play­ers who had to quar­an­tine. “It was some­thing dif­fer­ent, but I think our player de­vel­op­ment ac­tu­ally im­proved. Our play­ers re­ally im­proved their game.” 

Prior to the game, Owens said the team had to re­gain its rhythm in or­der to beat Cor­ner­stone. He and Crews again led the team in scor­ing against Cor­ner­stone, but their ef­forts fell short. Bethel suf­fered their first loss of the sea­son, los­ing 85-79. 

Fol­low­ing the game, the Bethel ath­let­ics web­site quoted Drabyn say­ing his team played well in tran­si­tion and got the ball in the paint. Ac­cord­ing to Drabyn, bad turnovers and missed two’s cost Bethel the win. 

De­spite the chal­lenges of COVID-19, Owens still thinks Bethel has the po­ten­tial to do well against the Cross­roads League this sea­son. He said he is ex­cited for what is to come this sea­son. 

“We have a lot of pieces,” Owens said. “I hon­estly think we have the best guards in the coun­try and just to see how good we can be as a team, I think is very scary for the Cross­roads League.” 

Bethel’s next game, on Nov. 18 at 8 p.m., will be against Gov­er­nors State Uni­ver­sity. The game will be live-streamed here.