As Wisconsin men's basketball coaches discuss who will fill the Badgers' 16th roster spot, The Daily Cardinal sat down with tryout participant Casey Shorts to get a glimpse of what the session was like Thursday, Nov. 1.
Daily Cardinal: First of all, what made you decide to go out for the team?
Casey Shorts: I played sports in high school. I was a varsity athlete for my high school three years in a row. I played quite a bit, and I figured, why not give it a shot?
DC: How good were you in high school? Were you ever All-Conference?
CS: I was never All-Conference. I typically had more fouls than points in games. I was decent. I came off the bench every game and played solid minutes. But I was never anything special.
DC: Were you nervous at all going into the practice?
CS: I was a little nervous. I hadn't tried out for anything like that in the last three years as far as sports-wise. There were a lot of guys there who were pretty good. And just the chance to do something like that, pretty much anyone would be nervous.
DC: What drills did they first have you doing when you got in there?
CS: They had dribbling drills at first, which was sort of ironic because, I mean, we're trying out for a college sports team and they're having us dribble to make sure we could do that.
They had us do shooting drills, three-on-three drills, five-on-five. That's about it.
DC: Going back to the dribbling drills, was it just dribbling back and forth, up and down the court?
CS: Yeah, it was the full length of the court. You dribbled half speed with the right hand and half speed with the left hand back. And then you did full speed.
A couple of the guys actually messed up and dribbled off their foot. They were probably just nervous. But I didn't mess up. It was easy.
DC: How long did practice run?
CS: It was probably about an hour and a half long. They made two rounds of cuts and they had five guys in the end that they were going to check out and see if they were elligible to play.
DC: When did they make the first cuts?
CS: Probably about an hour and 15 minutes into tryouts. They made a cut of 30 guys, left 10 guys there and played five-on-five. Then they cut five more guys.
DC: Were you in the first cut?
CS: Yeah, I didn't make it past the first round.
DC: Did they have you doing any conditioning or sprints?
CS: Yeah, in 30 seconds we had to go back and forth [to midcourt] eight times, and they wanted to see who was in good shape and if you didn't make it within the 30 seconds, you'd probably be excluded from making the team. But everybody made it.
DC: How would you rate the overall experience?
CS: It was pretty cool. Not many people get the opportunity to try out for a college team. It was pretty cool to try and see if I could make it.
DC: Would you do it again?
CS: Yeah, absolutely I would do it again. Just that opportunity, like I said, is great - to have that hope that you might make the team, maybe come out in front of the Kohl Center and have people cheer you on.
DC: Do you have a better respect for what [the Badger players] have to go through, having gone through that one practice?
CS: Absolutely, I have greater respect for what they do out there. To go through that day in and day out and beat up on each other and still have to go to class is a pretty big task.
I woke up Friday morning and pretty much rolled out of bed and rolled into the shower because I was so sore from the tryouts.
According to UW assistant coach Gary Close, the Badger coaching staff will choose from a handful"" of remaining players. Close also confirmed Wisconsin would like to fill one spot.
