Part three of a five-part series by Steve Kelley, former Seattle Times sports columnist
It starts in the gym, in the anonymity of a redshirt season. It starts with drills, some as ancient as the late Hall of Famer George Mikan. In fact one of the drills is named for him.
Drop step and shoot. Back pivot. Turn your shoulders to the left, then spin right. Left hand hooks. Right hand hooks. Repeat and repeat and repeat.
It starts either before or after the team has had its formal practice. It’s just you and a coach and maybe a willing teammate or two. They whack at your arms. They shove and bump and get on your nerves, all in the pursuit of developing you into a bona fide Division I big man.
There are no games to relieve the monotony of these practices. Sometimes these drills feel more rugged than a rugby scrum, the paint more congested than the dance floor at The Neptune on a Friday night. The gym can almost feel claustrophobic, even darker than it really is. But this is what Seattle University’s 7-foot-3 center Aaron Menzies signed up for. This is the beginning of an adventure and even he isn’t sure where it might lead.
“Sometimes I got a little bit frustrated,” Menzies says, now more than a year removed from his redshirt season. “I couldn’t suit up. I sat on the end of the bench and I was itching to play. But (assistant) Coach (Darren) Talley spoke quite a lot when he was recruiting me. We developed a relationship and he let me know what it was going to take. I knew I was really going to have to work to get where I wanted to go.”
Menzies is 20 and has only been playing basketball for four years. He began during his junior year of high school when the basketball coach spotted a 6-foot-11 kid walking on campus and said to him, “Hey you’re big, why don’t you come out for basketball?”
“After that first year I realized the opportunities I could have,” he says. “I saw what Big Jack was doing and it seemed like a natural thing for me.”
Big Jack was fellow Englishman Jack Crook, another seven-footer from Manchester, who preceded Menzies to Seattle U. When he arrived, Menzies even said to Head Coach Cameron Dollar, “I want you to do for me what you did for Big Jack.”
“Aaron saw how well we were doing with Jack and how he had progressed,” Dollar says. “It spurred him on. He saw how we were taking our time in letting Jack develop. That’s something you don’t get to do much anymore.”
College basketball has become an Instagram culture. Players and fans and, even many administrations want success yesterday. There are approximately 700 players transferring every year. As many as 40 or 50 coaching jobs open from year to year.
“In the midst of all of that, people don’t care about timing and development as much anymore. It’s not culturally cool to develop players,” Dollar says.
The secret is finding guys who are willing to put in the uncool, tedious hours away from the arenas, away from the adrenaline rush of a Saturday night game in January, to succeed.
“I think the most important thing is enjoying the process of keeping on getting better,” Menzies says. “You’ve got to enjoy the process while you’re building toward something. You have to remind yourself that the results will come.”
“You’ve got to have guys who get it,” Dollar says. “Aaron gets it. He got it when he walked in the door. I didn’t have to sell him on it. This is the process of him working through his own development. He’s not going to sabotage it by being impatient.
“He doesn’t get down on himself, doesn’t get frustrated much, doesn’t think something should come very quickly. He’s always known it’s going to take a little time.”
In his first varsity season, Menzies shot 53 percent from the field, best on the team. He played in every game, starting once and averaging 16.3 minutes a game. He was second on the team in blocked shots and averaged 4.8 rebounds a game. Just as important, and this might sound odd considering he is 7-3, Menzies began to realize the advantage he has because of his size.
“I first started seeing it through the film we watched after games,” Menzies says in his distinctive Manchester accent. “I’d go through the analyzing process. It was really the first time I’d ever seen myself on film. I realized how much of a size advantage I really had, how much of a space advantage I had up high. It’s pretty much my own space up there and I can use that as a weapon.”
When he first came to Seattle U, Menzies was knocked around pretty hard by Crook and William Powell and, well, a lot of the Redhawks. But since he arrived, Menzies has added 35 pounds of muscle, which has helped him deal with the game’s physicality. Now he feels he is one of the bangers, not the bangee.
“He’s got a good jump hook, left hand and right hand,” Dollar says “He’s going to increase his rebounding numbers. I think he’s going to be a monster on the boards. That’s something that’s a point of emphasis with us for him. Because he’s so big and beginning to learn how to use his size, he’s going to continue to develop into being a consistent, low-post scoring threat.
“He wasn’t carrying the load last year, but we’re designing it so that he can carry the load in the years to come. It’s the evolution of what we see him being able to do. He’s becoming a threat and teams are going to have to adjust to doing something to stop him, which will make us even better.”
In the perfect world, Menzies may become such a threat that teams will feel forced to double team him in the low post. Dollar can then arrange shooters around the three-point arc and run his offense inside-out.
“He’s always had a good, healthy view of himself that he could eventually play here,” Dollar says. “He knew he had to do a lot of work and I don’t think anyone coming in ever knows what that work will look like or what the speed of the game, or the intensity of the game looks like. The only way you learn is to get out there and do it. He’s always had that great balance of having patience, but also being aggressive and wanting more. It sets him up to keep getting better.”
Does Menzies feel the pressure of his increased responsibilities? A little more than four years ago, he was playing bass in a soul band. Basketball was a novelty, not an aspiration. Now his view of this game has changed. He sees the game as a great adventure, a mountain he will fearlessly climb.
“Sure it can be a lot of pressure,” he says. “But I’m relishing the opportunity to show off the results of all of the hard work that I’ve put in over the last two years. I’m excited about it.”
It’s showtime.
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The 2016-17 men's basketball schedule has been released! Included in the 16-game home slate are 10 contests at KeyArena and six in Seattle U's newly renovated Connolly Complex. Secure your tickets today by contacting the SU Athletics Ticket Office at 206-398-4678, or email Zach Habner, Coordinator of Tickets and Fan Experience, at habnerz@seattleu.edu.