{"id":414526,"date":"2026-07-28T00:01:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T00:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/414526\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T00:01:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T00:01:09","slug":"new-usd-basketball-coach-jr-blount-sets-his-culture-with-630-a-m-practices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/414526\/","title":{"rendered":"New USD basketball coach JR Blount sets his culture with 6:30 a.m. practices"},"content":{"rendered":"

New coach JR Blount gathered his University of San Diego men\u2019s basketball team last month for its first day of summer workouts.<\/p>\n

There were no balls.<\/p>\n

First there was a two-hour meeting to outline standards, philosophies, identity, rules, expectations. Then they walked outside and discussed how they would enter the practice facility each day, how they addressed each other, how they dressed, how they shook hands, how they looked people in the eye, how they carried themselves.<\/p>\n

Then they went into the clutter-free locker room and learned how it would stay that way.<\/p>\n

Next stop was the practice facility court. There were no chairs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want guys coming to the court to sit down,\u201d Blount explained. \u201cIt\u2019s not what we\u2019re doing. You come to the court to get work done. Our whole mentality is when you\u2019re stepping into the gym, you\u2019re coming to work. It\u2019s time to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"USDUSD men\u2019s basketball coach JR Blount addresses his players during a recent early-morning practice on campus. (USD athletics)<\/p>\n

Oh, and practice would be at 6:30 each day \u2013 6:30 a.m.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t take long to realize there\u2019s a new sheriff in town, that this is no longer Steve Lavin\u2019s program with his California casual attitude and offensive-minded approach. Blount, in many ways, represents the polar opposite<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 strict, punctual, defense, defense, defense.<\/p>\n

Practices, despite the zero-dark-thirty starts, are loud, intense, energetic, active, physical. The first drills Monday focused on rebounding, the next half-dozen on various aspects of their pressuring, helping, swarming, trapping defense.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to be some kind of offensive savant,\u201d said Blount, who was the de facto defensive coordinator as an assistant at Iowa State before coming to Alcala Park. \u201cI\u2019m not trying to be that. We\u2019re going to be a defensive, physical team, and that will be our identity. Everyone\u2019s like, \u2018Yeah.\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018Well, the school down the road (San Diego State) did it and went to the national championship game.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI know it can be done. I know it works. Obviously, you have to have the personnel. But to me, it\u2019s more the mentality. And these guys have bought into it. They know what it is. They know what they signed up for, so there are no surprises. We know who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Blount accomplished that as his team breaks before the start of the fall semester, that is it.<\/p>\n

Coaches talk about setting the culture.<\/p>\n

Culture, set.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can already sense this is going to be a winning program,\u201d said Sekou Konneh, a 6-foot-9 transfer from Milwaukee who admittedly was a night owl who went to bed at 1 or 2 a.m. before arriving at USD. \u201cIt\u2019s how intentional we\u2019ve been with everything, being on time, whether it\u2019s a study hall or (ankle) taping or showing up at 6 a.m. for your first workout before practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think all of that is part of winning, and we have that here. I haven\u2019t experienced things like that before.\u201d<\/p>\n

A couple weeks in, someone was two minutes late for study hall. Someone else was five minutes late for class.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has not been any since, because there was some running that happened,\u201d Blount said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was crazy, it was crazy,\u201d said Terry McMorris, a 6-6 transfer from Eastern Illinois. \u201cNever again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MembersMembers of USD\u2019s men\u2019s basketball team talk with coach JR Blount at midcourt during a recent practice. The Toreros are practicing in T-shirts that read \u201cG.B.D.,\u201d short for \u201cGet Better Daily.\u201d (USD athletics)<\/p>\n

Practices are followed by a trip to the weight room, classes, individual workouts, study hall and film sessions, then a daily team meeting each afternoon followed by a team dinner.<\/p>\n

Players wear practice shirts not with their names but the letters \u201cG.B.D.\u201d on the back. Get Better Daily.<\/p>\n

Only four members of last season\u2019s roster returned, and just one of those \u2014 6-9 Puerto Rican forward Alejandro Aviles \u2014 played meaningful minutes (and he\u2019s not currently practicing after back surgery). The other 11 are all new, handpicked by Blount and his staff for their talent and character, not necessarily in that order.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe character piece is huge for me,\u201d said Blount, whose alarm goes off at 4 a.m. each morning. \u201cThey came to the house the other day, and my wife said after they left: \u2018Those are some good dudes. I don\u2019t know if they\u2019re any good at basketball, but they\u2019re good guys.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the most important thing. A lot of these guys in the portal, juco, high school, they\u2019re good at basketball. But we got lucky because they\u2019re great guys and I\u2019m not worried about them off the court. They have totally bought in to everything we\u2019ve done. It\u2019s been special. I\u2019m not telling you we\u2019ll be great. I\u2019m telling you we\u2019ll be connected.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"IowaIowa State assistant coaches JR Blount and Kyle Green watch from the bench during the second half of an NCAA college basketball exhibition game against Creighton, Sunday, Oct. 19, 2025, in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo\/Bonnie Ryan)<\/p>\n

Blount spent the previous five seasons at Iowa State under T.J. Otzelberger, preceded by three at Colorado State on Niko Medved\u2019s staff. The influence of both bosses is apparent.<\/p>\n

The roster composition is similar to those Iowa State teams that made deep runs in the NCAA Tournament \u2014 strong, long, tough, junkyard dogs who are interchangeable parts on, in Blount\u2019s words, a \u201cdictating and disrupting\u201d defense annually ranked among the best in Division I.<\/p>\n

The Cyclones are not known for plucking five-star recruits but flipping over rocks to uncover gems, and Blount\u2019s transfers come from Ball State, Grand Canyon, Grambling State, UC Riverside, Maryland-Baltimore County, Milwaukee, Eastern Illinois, a Division II school in Missouri and a junior college in Florida.<\/p>\n

Otzelberger regularly practiced at 7 a.m. Blount is going at 6:30 a.m. \u201cbecause I want to work harder than them.\u201d<\/p>\n

From his trips to SDSU\u2019s Viejas Arena with Colorado State, he learned what good defense can do to good offense.<\/p>\n

\u201cNiko is a top 10 offensive coach in the country,\u201d Blount said, \u201cand we had all this stuff; we\u2019d do all this preparation. We would come here and couldn\u2019t run any of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Konneh was asked what the returning players told him about the difference from prior seasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey said the intensity is different, getting up early, being everywhere on time is important,\u201d he said. \u201cEveryone is on point with everything we do. We have 12-hour days. We\u2019re here with each other constantly. They were telling me they didn\u2019t do that. They would practice and then go about their day.\u201d<\/p>\n

McMorris was asked to describe his new team\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow together we are,\u201d he said. \u201cWe connected so fast. Usually it takes months. The whole team is a bunch of dogs that want to kill whatever is in front of it, honestly. We all know anybody can go for 20 on any given night, but we\u2019re going to be the hardest-playing defensive team in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a defense-first guy. I love it, I love defense. But it\u2019s not for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New coach JR Blount gathered his University of San Diego men\u2019s basketball team last month for its first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1327,181,74,76,75,127,1696,3425],"class_list":["post-414526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-college-sports","tag-latest-headlines","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-sports","tag-top-stories-sdut","tag-toreros"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}