Lucas: On The Run

By Adam Lucas

It was right there in the name on the practice schedule, but Steve Robinson still made sure the Tar Heels understood the day's activity.

Thursday was Carolina's annual conditioning test, a rigorous challenge of a dozen "33s," in which one 33 is the full length of the Smith Center court—down and back, down and back again, and then down and back again, in 33 seconds or less. Players must complete twelve of them in order to meet the requirements. The day marks the end of Carolina's preseason conditioning program, with the first team practice next Thursday and Late Night with Roy Williams on Friday.

It's listed pretty simply for the team: "Conditioning test."

Robinson reinforced that notion. "This really is a test," he told the Tar Heels. "We want to see who is going to quit. We want to know who is going to show toughness on the nights that are tougher than this drill."

It probably sounds very simple on the page, but twelve 33s is taxing even for Division I athletes. The first four or five are manageable. By repetitions six or seven (guards run with guards, wings run with wings, and the big men run with their fellow big men) there are some chests heaving and the sweat is dripping.

There is a major incentive to finish all twelve: anyone who doesn't is required to do the entire test again on a subsequent day. Graduate transfer Christian Keeling asked about the retake policy.

"You do not want to come back and do it again," veteran Walker Miller told him.

"No," Shea Rush agreed. "You do not want to come back."

Experienced players know how seriously to follow the rules. It's just running, sure, but there are regulations: touch the line at every single turn. Past years have occasionally seen a headstrong player dispute whether they touched the line or not when called out by a staff member. This year, no one was taking any chances. Brandon Huffman came up an eyelash short of the line on his penultimate turn in one of the final sprints; he went back and made certain that he retouched it, costing him a couple valuable seconds in an exercise in which success or failure is usually just a second on either side of the 0:33 mark.

The standout for the day—even earning praise from Robinson—was Cole Anthony. The freshman made his tough time (finishing a sprint in 31 seconds instead of 33) on nine different sprints, becoming the very rare freshman to lead the way in a conditioning test. There is usually simply too much difference between prep level conditioning and the souped-up, Jonas Sahratian-led version. Not for Anthony, who completed virtually every conditioning session in the front of the pack.

For most players, the reward was in simply finishing. Shea Rush, who is somehow a senior even though it seems like he just arrived in Chapel Hill, was asked if it was bittersweet to know this was his last Carolina basketball conditioning test.

"Bittersweet?" he said, while taking the two cool-down laps around the court prescribed by Sahratian. "Not bitter. Just sweet. All sweet."

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Cole Anthony

Brandon Huffman

Christian Keeling

Walker Miller

Shea Rush

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