LOUISVILLE, Ky.—Louisville Cardinals star Montrezl Harrell is no stranger to discipline.
"Going to a military school, you were on the military lifestyle," Harrell told Bleacher Report at the Cards' annual media day, discussing the postgraduate year he spent at Hargrave Military Academy before coming to Louisville. "You had to stay in shape, you had to be up at 5:45 every morning, you had to be outside for formation...It was a real eye-opener."
While Cardinal basketball coach Rick Pitino doesn't demand dress blues or a clean-shaven look, Harrell firmly insists that the Hall of Famer doesn't skimp, either. Comparing Pitino's discipline to the Hargrave way, Harrell said, "Oh, he's past that. I'd have gone back to military school before I dealt with that Coach P discipline."
All the work Harrell put in at Hargrave and the molding done in his first two years under Pitino are about to pay off, both for Harrell and the Louisville fans who flocked to the KFC Yum! Center for U of L's annual Red-White scrimmage. As expected, Harrell played a dominant game, leading the White team to a 75-72 victory with 24 points and 12 rebounds.
Named a preseason All-American by multiple media outlets, Harrell is the focal point of the Cardinals' debut season in the ACC. But is he ready to lead a team with a large freshman class, some big expectations and a sizable legacy left by the last Louisville superstar?
That question won't be truly answered until the grind of the ACC schedule is fully underway, but there's no reason to believe Harrell can't be the alpha male of a potential Final Four team.
Back to the Future
Harrell's decision to spurn the NBA draft for a junior season at Louisville was surprising to many, including his coach. In the long run, though, Harrell saw too much downside to an early jump.
"In the NBA, once you get there and they feel like you can't do the job, then they hire somebody else," Harrell said. "They send you down to the D-League, and that's not where I wanna be."
The money that he passed up by staying at Louisville was a factor in the decision, but Harrell is trying to leave that aspect on the back burner as he prepares to play one more college season.
"I try not to let myself think about it too much," Harrell told The Courier-Journal's Jeff Greer. "If you start thinking about those things and worrying about those things, you stress yourself out. I just have to worry about making myself a better basketball player and helping better my team."
Thanks to staying with Pitino and the Cardinals, Harrell's game already shows signs of rounding out. Far from the one-note power dunker and energetic rebounder who contributed off the bench for the 2013 national champions, Harrell is now exhibiting improved ball-handling skills, a better mid-range jumper and even the occasional stroke from outside the arc.
Harrell sank three three-pointers during the Red-White scrimmage, all from the same left corner position. His klieg-light smile was clearly in evidence after each one, but Pitino advised moderation after the game.
"What I told him in the first half was that he didn't have an offensive rebound," Pitino said in his postgame comments. "So, you don't want to take away what made you a first-team All-American. In the second half, he was much better."
Indeed, seven of Harrell's 12 boards came in the second half, including all four on the offensive end. His ability to blend the lunch-pail mentality of the workhorse rebounder with his burgeoning perimeter game will be a key to Louisville's new-look offense.
"(He) worked very hard on it, with individual instruction, for two years, so I certainly don't want to take it away, especially since we're running a lot of motion now," Pitino said.
The defensive end, however, is where Harrell wants to make his greatest impact this year.
"I think I became so [focused] on working on my offensive side of the game that my defense started lacking a bit," Harrell said. "So I need to get back to the defense I used to play."
That's surely music to his coach's ears.
Burning Up
Harrell goes hard every day in practice, treating it less like between-game drudgery and more like an audition—the one shot any player has to prove that he deserves minutes. Sometimes, his supporting post players get burned by his roaring fire.
Sophomore Akoy Agau was nearly a casualty of Harrell's unending fury on the practice court. Between persistent injuries and his daily struggles against Harrell when healthy, Agau was exiled so far down the bench last year that he may as well have been in the Phantom Zone.
Harrell offers no apologies.
"With me going as hard as I do every day, I feel like it's gonna make these young guys better," Harrell said. "I don't go at these young guys to bash 'em or show them I'm better than them. I feel like, if I'm going at you this hard, imagine what the next man will try to do when he's not on your team."
The performance of Harrell's low-post supporting cast will be closely scrutinized, because someone needs to take the burden off the All-American or be assertive if Harrell winds up in foul trouble.
Freshman Chinanu Onuaku's effort level, both in practice and the scrimmage, came with special praise from Harrell and Pitino.
"When he first came in, his body was out of shape. He used to give up on drills, but now he's competing," Harrell said. "He plays hard, he's rebounding the ball well, he wants to learn and get better."
Onuaku, the younger brother of former Syracuse star Arinze Onuaku, produced nine points and 10 rebounds in the scrimmage, solidly outproducing sophomore center Mangok Mathiang. Afterward, Pitino used the phrase "physical specimen" to describe the 6'10" rookie from Maryland.
"You guys saw him in the spring (at the Derby Festival Classic)," Pitino said. "It wasn't very pleasing to the eye. People told me he was in pathetic shape. Now, he's in great shape, probably 250 pounds of solid muscle, and he is the most ready to play of the freshmen."
The crowd favorite at the scrimmage was undoubtedly 7-foot Egyptian Anas Mahmoud. He put up 12 points and seven rebounds, including four offensive. However, his three blocks and two steals stirred the most reaction. He took both swipes coast to coast for emphatic dunks, and one second-half swat of projected starting guard Terry Rozier brought the fans to their feet.
Mahmoud arrived on campus at 184 pounds and now claims to be at 205. Still, he knows there's much more work to do.
"I probably have skills that [would let] me play," Mahmoud said. "But when you play with the ACC...You can't just have the skills; you have to get physically strong so you can show your skills."
Mahmoud gives a lot of credit for his improvements to Harrell's daily pounding in practice.
"It's an awesome thing to practice with him every day," Mahmoud said. "I play power forward, like him. I have to guard him every day, and he guards me every day, so that makes me better every day."
Mahmoud's fellow 7-foot import, Norwegian Matz Stockman, contributed little during the scrimmage and will almost certainly redshirt.
If I Could Be Like Trez
Many of the Cardinals' young post players circled back to Harrell as a benchmark for the type of player they aspire to be. Mathiang said, "Man, it's Montrezl Harrell," in the same way that an aspiring guitarist trying to explain his worship of a certain left-handed genius might say, "Man, it's Hendrix."
"With Montrezl, all you have to do is just follow him," Mathiang continued. "He plays hard, you play hard. He dives into the stands, you gotta dive into the stands next time."
Harrell was often seen counseling his teammates during the Red-White scrimmage, memorably screaming "Calm down!" at his teammates as a once-sizable White lead dwindled in the second half. For his part, the burly North Carolina native attributes his newly embraced vocal nature to the two years he learned under departed veterans Russ Smith and Luke Hancock.
"Being around those guys, they taught me how to carry myself on the court and off the court," Harrell said. "I feel like all those things they instilled in me, it's now my turn to instill in those younger guys behind me."
Louisville is a team with only two seniors. One, point guard Chris Jones, was a junior college transfer who was new to the scene last year. The other, wing Wayne Blackshear, was singled out for lack of improvement by Pitino at the end of last season.
The inexperienced Cardinals could easily be a rudderless ship if not for Harrell's relentless drive. And far from being a mere talker, Harrell is leading his team by example. His teammates understand, and so does his coach.
"Montrezl is everything a first-team All-American should be," Pitino said after the scrimmage. "He's worked at making his game better...and I'm real proud of him."
All quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.
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