It was December 10, 2012 and Navy had just defeated the much improved Bryant Bulldogs. The victory was the Midshipmen’s sixth of the season, which already doubled their win total from a season prior. The sudden success was rather surprising, since it was without the expected leadership of J.J. Avila. With Avila and junior Isaiah Roberts having been asked to leave the Academy, Ed DeChellis’ squad, loaded with underclassmen and nary a senior presence, was showing promise nonetheless. Tilman Dunbar was running the show. Kendall Knorr and Brandon Venturini were draining threes with consistency. And Worth Smith was reeking havoc around the rim on both sides of the ball. The difficult rebuild was beginning to turn around in DeChellis’ second season at the helm.
Unfortunately for Navy, the victory over Bryant served as their apex of the season. The Mids ended up dropping 18 of their final 20 contests. The underclassmen began to break down, with Knorr and Smith suffering shoulder injuries that made life difficult on the court. Dunbar, the rookie who had been admirably shouldering the load as the point guard, began to struggle. As a result, the offensive and defensive efficiency really began to suffer.
While the downturn appeared to be sudden to the outsider, DeChellis wasn’t really surprised when things began to go south against Patriot League competition.
“I was just trying to be optimistic (about last season), but I knew the challenges ahead,” admitted DeChellis. “League play is always different from non-league play; people in our league know who you are. And for us, our freshmen had to play prominent roles if we were going to improve vastly. What they go through here at (Navy’s summer program), I knew sometime in January they were really going to hit the wall and they did.”
A blunt DeChellis continued, “To be quite honest with you, there was one (Patriot League) game I thought we should have won that we didn’t win, but otherwise I thought they’d all be real struggles for us. It’s hard to win at the Academy unless you have older kids. It’s just what it is. It’s just so hard to do well … To really make a run at (a successful season), you need to have seniors and juniors to carry the weight.
Despite the poor second half of last season, the young Mids still have plenty to look forward to this upcoming season. Dunbar landed on the all-rookie Patriot League team for his excellent efforts, highlighted by his 41.6% assist rate, which ranked tenth in the country. In addition, his turnover rate of 21.5% was solid for a freshman floor general. Now, the onus falls on improving Dunbar’s nonexistent – he didn’t make a single three-pointer in 31 contents – perimeter game.
“(Tilman) has really worked hard this spring in terms of his shot,” said DeChellis. “And that’s something we really tried to focus on. We really worked hard this (offseason) working with him playing without the ball in his hand.”
“He needs to be able to make a 15-17 foot open jump shot. Right now in the league, people are undercutting ball screens, because they didn’t really honor his shooting ability. I think you’ll see a huge jump in his game and his productivity, even though he had a great freshman year for us.”
Knorr was also a revelation in the backcourt early on, shooting 40.0% from behind the arc in Navy’s first 16 games. Once the shoulder injury and fatigue began to set in, however, the freshman closed out the season shooting a paltry 17.2% from long distance. Knorr, like his teammate Smith, has been recently cleared to fully practice after undergoing surgery in March to repair a torn labrum.
After earning a Patriot League all-rookie team selection for the 2011-12 season, Smith took a small step back, in part due to his aching shoulder. So far, the long 6’6″ forward has had trouble staying healthy at Navy, but DeChellis is hopeful the third season will be a charm for Smith.
Smith should have help in the frontcourt with the expected emergence of sophomore Will Kelly. The forward has hit the weight room hard this offseason, putting on 15-18 pounds of muscle. Now at 233 pounds (he was 210 at the beginning of last season), Kelly is primed for a breakout after grabbing 3.4 rebounds per game as a freshman.
“He’s a guy I think has a chance to become a much more consistent guy rebounding the ball, a more consistent guy scoring the ball, making his free throws,” said DeChellis. “I think he’s a guy who’s had a pretty good summer here and will show a vast improvement.”
Controlling the glass was a major weakness for the Mids last season, but a frontcourt anchored by Smith and Kelly, who led the team in rebounding last season, gives DeChellis hope that he’ll have one of the better frontcourt duos moving forward in the Patriot League.
With the returning players – Navy brings back their top six scorers from a season ago – Navy is expected to make significant strides toward respectability, especially with DeChellis adding several impact freshmen to the mix.
Another weakness for the Mids last season was finding someone to reliably play the “3” on the floor, but the addition of 6’5″ freshman Mike Brown could immediately alleviate that. As an athletic shooting guard, Brown possesses an excellent mid-range game with the ability to drain a three-point shot. DeChellis mentioned Brown as one of his high impact freshman coming in, mainly because of the opportunity ahead of him.
James Hemphill, a 6’6″ hard-nosed forward with a high motor, also has a chance for an immediate impact as a small forward for the Mids. Like Brown, Hemphill’s athleticism and shooting ability could find the newcomer some valuable minutes in season number one.
The same also goes for 5’11” freshman guard Zach Fong, who at Gar-field High was a lethal three-point shooter that excelled with or without the ball in his hands. As a rookie, the combo guard should have an opportunity to back up Dunbar at the point, since the “2” guard position has a logjam of talent with Knorr, Venturini – who led Navy in three-pointers made last season – and 5’7″ guard Kevin Alter vying for playing time off the ball.
All in all, it’s an exciting time to be a Midshipmen fan. DeChellis feels like the third season will be the year his squad will begin to truly reap the benefits of a rebuilt roster.
“We’ve had a good recruiting class the past year; I think we have another good recruiting class (coming up). Now we have to keep these guys and let them grow and develop into juniors and seniors, so we aren’t putting so much pressure on the freshmen class every year. We’re getting closer to that.”
You can follow Ryan on Twitter @pioneer_pride
NYC Buckets Archive 