It's Monday evening, and for most of the MSU men's basketball team, practice has just ended. Some of MSU's guards are casually shooting at a far basket, some are doing a cool-down stretch at center court.
Meanwhile, at the other end of Breslin Center, the 17 Club is just getting started.
One at a time, MSU's big men — sophomore forwards Goran Suton and Marquise Gray, sophomore center Idong Ibok and junior center Drew Naymick — cycle through a series of drills with basic training-like urgency. They practice jump hooks with each hand. They sprint through the lane, receive an entry pass and try to finish as they're hit with a football-style tackling bag. They throw down 10 consecutive standing dunks from alternating sides of the basket. They sprint cross-court 17 times — hence the name of the club — in fewer than 80 seconds. They shoot free throws, with missed ones carrying the threat of having to do everything over again.
The added workout, which began about four weeks ago at the suggestion of assistant coaches Jim Boylen and Dwayne Stephens, uses different drills from practice to practice, but the intensity stays the same. As does the intent — to give MSU's patchwork frontcourt an extra shot of conditioning and confidence.
"In the pros, you stay in shape because you play four games a week," said Boylen, an NBA assistant from 1992-2005. "In college … you just can't stay in shape with the reps in practice and two games a week. That ain't enough for the way we want to play."
The quartet of big men was solid but not spectacular early this season, with one player seemingly taking a step back each time another one took a step forward. While the Spartans got by with a different combination of them every game, the inconsistency made it hard for head coach Tom Izzo to establish a consistent substitution pattern. Ibok's averaging 11.2 minutes per game, but the other three are all playing between 19 and 26, and they've come at all different points in the game. Izzo's hoping the extra conditioning will help stabilize that rotation.
"That's really all we're asking," Izzo said. "We're not asking 20 and 10 out of them. We're just asking for a little more solid play so we can know what we're going to get, instead of guessing what we're going to get."
Of course, the players' initial response to the added workload was somewhat hesitant.
"Who wants to run?" Gray said.
But with big men such as Greg Oden (Ohio State), Shaun Pruitt (Illinois) and Carl Landry (Purdue) looming on the schedule, it didn't take much convincing to assure the frontcourt it had to take on even more responsibility.
"You've got to look at it like it's making us better," Gray said. "In games, when their guys are tired, that's when you realize that running's paying off."
Players and coaches claim they're seeing immediate dividends. The quartet has combined for an average of 27 points and 18 rebounds in MSU's last four games — all wins. They've helped MSU outrebound five of its six Big Ten opponents, and the Spartans entered the week with the fourth-highest rebounding margin in the nation (plus-9.7).
"We've learned to love it a little bit," Ibok said. "When it first started, it seemed like (punishment). But just seeing the results … if that's punishment, punish me every day."
