People who have been to SLU’s practices this season have said that the practices are very stop and go, that with so many freshmen on the team Rick Majerus has to constantly stop what the team is doing to explain things. “There’s a lot of teaching that goes on,” forward Brian Conklin said. “It’s for the better I think.”

With so much to learn, it’s not surprising the team and its many freshmen looked a bit unfamiliar with some basic concepts. Not only was SLU not blocking out on some rebounds, they didn’t even appear to be in the vicinity on some. How many passes on offense went to spots where nobody was? Somebody was expecting somebody to be somewhere, and one of the two parties was wrong. (Another side effect of the slow pace of practice is that the team’s conditioning isn’t as good as it might be.)

“It seemed there was a lot of over running rebounds today,” said Conklin, “not running to find a body, just running under the basket. A few little bumps and they get position. We just have to work on it.”

“We just have to work harder on it in practice,” Willie Reed said. “We worked on it this week but we had some slipups. I think it had to do some people feeling rusty and we were so excited we were trying to get the ball and go. We’ve got to worry about the defensive end and blocking out so we can get that transition going.”

Majerus rated Christian Salecich as the best of the freshmen on Day One, which is no surprise. After a summer playing for the Australian junior national team, Salecich is close to being in midseason form, though he still needs to learn the offense. Majerus expressed disappointment with the play of Cory Remekun and Jon Smith, who he thought didn’t give enough effort. “Jon Smith was disappointing in the toughness quotient. So was Cory,” Majerus said.

Kwamain Mitchell made just 2 of 15 shots. If you subtract his totals from the rest of the team, SLU made 31 of 45 shots, which is 69 percent. Majerus said he thought Mitchell only took maybe one bad shot, that he may have been trying single-handedly to make up for the loss of Lisch and Liddell.

Femi John looked good, except at the line, where he made 1 of 7 free throws, a worse percentage than Reed. John also had six rebounds and five assists.

Kyle Cassity made four of six shots and looked more willing to shoot. (The most shots he had in a game last season was seven.) His 26 minutes were more than any one on SLU. Trainer Jonathan Burch got a nice round of applause for finding Cassity’s lost contact lens.

Justin Jordan did well, it seemed to me, with four assists to one turnover and three steals. He could be a big contributor to this team and give the team someone to give Mitchell a break. For some reason, he hasn’t gotten his name on the back of his uniform yet.

(Speaking of which, SLU has gone with a different font for the names on the back of the uniforms this year. It’s smaller and blockier, too small I think.)

Salecich plays with a very determined look on his face. He’s got a nice touch on lobs to Reed. Expect them to do it a lot this season.

I thought Jon Smith did pretty well, though Majerus wanted him to play with more heart (as he yelled at Smith at one point in the game). Ten points, seven rebounds, four for four from the field. I’d like to see what he does with more heart.

Jeff Reid, who apparently has been hurt, played just eight minutes and had five points and one rebound.

Willie Reed had seven rebounds, but he had five in his first five minutes on the court and just two in the next 16.

On a largely unrelated topic, a few Fort Smith players came to me to check in as subs. You know, there’s a guy at the middle of the scorer’s table wearing a black and white striped shirt who seems a likely suspect to check in with. This happens on a fairly regular basis throughout the season. You would think that guys who have played basketball for years would have figured this out by now. Look for the guy in the striped shirt!

Lastly, Conklin and Reed made their debuts in the interview room on Friday.