For Minnesota Lynx head coach and general manager Cheryl Reeve, training camp is one of the most important periods of the season.
With the obvious tasks of finalizing the roster and getting new players familiar with the system taking place, Reeve is mainly focused on how she can help her team get on the same page as soon as possible.
And with this year’s regular season schedule getting condensed by a few weeks, that will be as important as ever in 2018.
“It’s a critical time for us. We don’t want to take the early part of the regular season to get on the same page, we use training camp to be ready for that first game,” Reeve told Zone Coverage. “If we had a playoff game on May 20, we want to make sure we’d be ready for it. With the new players this season, that’s a bit more of a challenge and we have to accelerate that.”
After hosting its first five days of training camp at The Courts at Mayo Clinic Square during the week, Minnesota got in one final practice in Des Moines, Iowa – the home of the Iowa Wolves – ahead of Sunday’s preseason game against the Washington Mystics.
“With training camp, it’s a lot of the same things. It gets real when you play a game. It turns everything up a notch,” Reeve said. “From a players perspective, they love it and they are excited to play a game. … Hopefully we see some more good things on Sunday.”
In past years, the Lynx have typically held their preseason games later in the year, due to a majority of the roster finishing up overseas commitments. But with a bulk of the current team taking time off during the offseason – a theme we’ve seen the past few years – Minnesota was able to speed up the process this year.
“This is the earliest we’ve had a preseason game in a long time,” Reeve said. “We usually have to wait until our players come back and wait until they are here to play. This year, we were able to have this early one because all of them – or at least most of them – are here. The timing of this is good, I think it’s perfect.”
The Lynx will take on the Mystics at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at Wells Fargo Arena in the first of two preseason games this season. And much like how she’s attacked every other offseason of her coaching career, Reeve will try to get the most out of her team during this critical time.
“This weekend is a big component in our training camp,” Reeve said. “And during week two, we’ll have a good idea who will make the team. When we get back and start again on Tuesday, you’ll see a whole other level of this thing.”
