Looking to Survive? Nope. Thrive
Culture Medved created at the start sets tone for upcoming season
Mike Brohard
The phrase is making a comeback.
Not that it ever went away. Not completely, but it was thrown around more back in the beginning. When it was really needed to bring the point home.
When Niko Medved took over the Colorado State men’s basketball program, there was a bit of chaos. There were also a plethora of changes in store. So, to survive it all and come out better the other way, the message was clear.
Be a cockroach.
“I think it’s that mentality of no matter what the circumstance is, it’s not just about surviving, it’s about thriving,” Medved said with the new season approaching. “It’s finding a way to thrive under any circumstance, and I think that’s something the group has bought into, and the new guys are finding. Yeah, we’ve really had to do that here in this offseason and preseason, and it’s something I think is a way of life.”
It's a mentality the program has taken on under Medved, entering his fifth season as the Rams are set to open the campaign Nov. 7 against Gardner-Webb at Moby Arena. It doesn’t look as good on a T-shirt as #TeamTogether, but the message is clear. With the first game less than a week away, the phrase is being used a bit more again.
Every team will undergo change. It’s the nature of college athletes. Players still graduate. They transfer now, too. For the Rams, this offseason was much more than the norm.
Mountain West Player of the Year David Roddy made the decision to leave the program early, and with good reason, as he became the No. 23 overall pick in the NBA Draft. At that point, some folks started taking Colorado State out of the equation to compete for the Mountain West title.
Not John Tonje.
“I’m thinking we’ll be fine. I’m thinking we’re all going to have to step up,” he said. “It’s going to have to be a collective. The culture has to continue getting better and tougher.”
Be a cockroach. Some new players were transferring in, which was good. The program added some freshmen. Also good. Three in each ledger, so the roster was going to look a bit different, some cohesion would have to be built and adaptations made with varying skills coming to the surface over the summer.
Besides, they still had Isaiah Stevens running the show, one of the top point guards one can find in the nation. Then they didn’t. He sustained a foot injury less than a month away from the opener, and once again, outside doubt was expressed.
Tonje is realistic. The injury wasn’t good for the team, but he felt worse for Stevens, a senior. Tonje is also not a quitter.
“We still have to carry on. We still have to keep going,” he said. “Our practices don’t change at all. Without Isaiah, obviously that hurts for him to go down, but it is on us to keep it rolling and make sure we’re in the best position when he comes back.”
When that is, nobody knows. And the last thing Medved wants Stevens to feel is pressure to come back too soon. He’s that kind of competitor. He’s going to want to beat any timeline set, so the team doesn’t have one with a date on it.
Stevens will be back when he’s ready to come back. That’s the date.
What’s going to happen, nobody really knows exactly, but Medved knows this about his team – it will find a way to thrive. It’s why a coach develops a culture, for moments – or a series of them -- like this.
“You have to keep things in perspective. It’s a game, you get to do what you love for a living every day and go out there,” he said. “How could it be better? You’re going to have ups and downs, there’s going to be adversity. There’s adversity you’re going to face throughout a season, throughout your life. Life is 10 percent of what happens to you and 90 percent of how you deal with it. I think it’s learning to go through those things and having the right response is huge.”
No matter how good you are, you’re going to hit some bumps in the road. It’s staying together. This team has that characteristic.Patrick Cartier
Find a way.
The answer may not be clear immediately, or easy to find. For the Rams, there will be some trial and error, especially in practice. But a cockroach, that was new for the newcomers.
“He talks about that all the time. On my recruiting trip, he talked about it, and this team definitely has that mentality,” transfer Patrick Cartier said. “It doesn’t seem like we have to be cockroaches with the new locker room, all the nice facilities, but any season, in practice every day, you’re going to find adversity at some point; something is not going to go your way. No matter how good you are, you’re going to hit some bumps in the road. It’s staying together. This team has that characteristic.”
Cartier considers himself a good judge of character, and in the transfer portal, one has to be careful. The talented big man didn’t have a shortage of suitors, but when Medved spoke, he felt he was getting a genuine message.
When the team talked about the work ethic they expect, he believed him. It was what he wanted, and in the end, seeing was believing.
“I think the first thing that jumped out was, and I talked to a couple of the other transfers about this too, you go in and you want to get some extra shots up at night, so you go into the IPF or whatever at 8 o’clock, and every single time there was always -- every single time -- someone else in there,” he said. “For me, that was, wow. This team, we talk about how we want to do it, and they really live it out every single day. The dedication and the work ethic are definitely there. We all have one group mind towards one goal, and everybody is on the same page.
“In the summer, I swear to God, every single night it happened.”
The Stevens injury hit the team hard. It hit the coaches hard because of the person Stevens is off the court. Put aside the leader he is for the team, or the fact he’s always been a calming influence in the tight moments. This season, his senior season, held plenty of promise. Most of all, they hurt for him.
Medved gave them time to do so. Because they are human, and how could they not feel bad for their teammate? And how could they not wonder what it would mean for them this season? Then they went back to work.
It’s what they do.
“We still hold on to that cockroach mentality,” Tonje said. “Anything can happen, and we’re always going to be ready to step up and continue to keep pushing. The cockroach thing is part of the culture. It’s one of the words we’ve picked up and we understand what it means. Some of the young guys are starting to learn what cockroach means. It’s it doesn’t matter what’s going on around you, you always have to adapt.
“That’s something we preach all the time, the next-man-up mentality. That doesn’t necessarily mean someone is going to come in and fill in the gap, it’s going to be everybody. It’s going to be collective. We’re all ready to take the next step and were ready for anything, honestly. We’re going to continue to keep working, because that’s the type of guys we have in the locker room.”
This was the culture Medved wanted to build, for these types of moments. Well, not exactly. Piece by piece, it’s been an awful lot for the Rams to absorb this offseason. The message still means the same.
Tonje learned it upon arrival, and now he’s preaching it to the newcomers. Players like Cartier are seeing it play out live every day. It’s not just a slogan, but a lifestyle for the program and it has calloused the players in the program.
“I feel like it starts with the seniors who have been in those big games. It ultimately comes down to toughness,” Tonje said. “Who’s the tougher team, who’s going to buckle down when they’re tired and who is going to make the physical plays during the game at the end, especially. The seniors, staring with me, have to continue expressing that and emphasizing it in practice and show them it’s something that has to happen year round. It has to happen in practice, and it’s going to carry over into games. We have to be tough.
“The toughness has to be there. I feel we’re recruiting the right guys, guys who are willing to be tough and do the things that fall under the category of toughness and being physical. As of recent, we’ve been showing real good sparks of that. I feel we’ll be good.”
Cartier is fond of something else Medved says a lot, which is no one leads on bad teams, average teams are led by coaches, but great teams are engineered by the players. It was exactly the type of program he wanted to join, and it’s what he has seen in action.
Medved can provide all the motivation he wants, but the action is what will carry weight. Action is the department of the players on the roster, and these days, he’s more than pleased with what is taking place.
“I see that every day. It’s not about what we say, or what you want, it’s about what you do every day,” Medved said. “What I’m seeing from this group every day on the practice floor is their consistency and the purpose to the process.
“Talk is cheap. The guys who have been here understand how difficult it is to win and they embrace that. How hard you have to work and how small the margins are between winning and losing, and they embrace that, and it’s carried over into our new guys. We’re excited for the challenge.”
Because a cockroach expects to do more than simply survive. Same for the Rams. Their goal is to find a way to thrive.