Note: Northern Illinois men's basketball coach Rob Judson writes on his thoughts as his team prepares for the upcoming basketball season. This is one in a series of entries.

Once our season ended and our players returned from Spring Break, it was time to move into our spring conditioning period. This is a great time of year where our players begin to concentrate on raising the level of their play for the next season. The NCAA Tournament is completed and the NBA playoffs are just beginning, so our players are fired up to work on their game and to invest time in the weight room. In the off-season, basketball players can raise the level of their game in two ways. A player can improve his athleticism in the weight room and with conditioning. Added strength improves quickness on the basketball court, and conditioning development adds to stamina. The second method is to improve a player's skill level on the court. Our individual skill workouts focus on each player's area of improvement. We emphasize these two areas throughout our spring workouts. The athletic and skill level where an athlete is currently positioned is not as important as the direction and pace of where that athlete is headed. Our strength and conditioning coach, Chad Bower, does an excellent job with our players. He individualizes every workout for each athlete. During the season we like to be sure to get in at least two lifts per week. That is difficult to do at times because we may play three games in a week and we have a mandatory day off due to NCAA rules. We are committed to the weight room because if a team doesn't maintain their strength level throughout the year, you will see a big drop off come February and March. During the spring we are in the weight room three days a week. Chad has our players doing a lot of explosive exercises and heavy leg work. James Hughes, Ben Rand, Frank Clair and Bryson McKenzie have made good progress on their lower body. In college basketball, your base and balance are affected so much by the strength level of your lower body. The lower back, butt and legs are really important to our post players' ability to hold ground inside. It's very physical inside the paint, and every rebound results in a great amount of body contact. How strong you are from the waist down determines your effectiveness around the basket. Cory Sims, Mike McKinney, Zach Pancratz, Anthony Maestranzi, Ryan Paradise, and Craig Reichel have a good lower body base. They work on their flexibility and explosiveness rather than building mass and bulk. With too much added bulk in the lower body, you can lose quickness, and we don't want that. Ryan's wrist is finally healed.He was cleared to go with full contact about one week after the students returned from spring break. Ryan has worked out like the energizer bunny since his clearance. He has a lot of energy that he's ready to use. Todd Peterson had surgery to repair a disc problem that gave him a lot of trouble during the season. He had to have a lot of treatment and worked with a chiropractor so that he could finish off the season. Todd will rehab this summer and should be ready to have a pain-free senior season. NCAA rules allow basketball players to work out eight hours per week during the off-season. Two of those hours can be for individual workouts in the gym with coaches. We can only have up to four players at a time during these workouts. Since we lift Monday, Wednesday and Friday, our individuals take place Tuesday and Thursday. We organize different groups together depending on our emphasis. We bring in all four of our inside guys and concentrate on post play with them. Offensive moves, shooting and rebounding drills helped increase the skill level of James, Bryson and Craig. Even though his eligibility is over, Johnathan Byrd would work out with this group. We played a lot of two on two inside with these guys. It's physical and demanding and your weaknesses are readily visible. Big guys grow into their bodies a little later than smaller players. When you are playing two on two, any awkwardness or lack of balance gives you problems. Our guys made a lot of strides by working on that this spring. James and Craig have great touch from the high post. Craig shoots the three-pointer well and we worked on increasing James' range, but he is not out to the arch yet. James can set himself up for an outstanding final two seasons. He is so skilled for standing 6-foot-11. The more he develops that lower body, the better he will be. Craig is skilled and has a big advantage over other big men - he is left-handed. It's hard to stop a good lefty inside. Craig won't jump over people, but he has good mass and uses his body well to create angle inside. It will be good to have him this coming year after his freshman redshirt. Bryson has the strongest upper body on the team. He has really developed a love for the weights. Bryson can be a factor with his defense and rebounding for our team. His knee is finally going to be 100 percent this summer, and playing in a good league will help Bryson out a lot. Our perimeter player workouts were always competitive and intense. Ben Rand and Ryan had a lot of energy from their redshirt seasons and were excited for the spring workouts. Zach, Mike, Cory and Anthony are all gym rats who love to play. We emphasized shooting a lot with this group. We wanted Cory, Zach and Ben to improve their three-point percentages. Cory shoots the three the best off the dribble, which is unusual. Ryan came to NIU shooting the three with his left hand which was injured. Now he can shoot it with his right. He was always pretty ambidextrous, but the injury allowed him to develop that trait even more. Anthony and Mike both shot well from three this past season and we wanted to keep that going for them. Mike is so explosive off the dribble and going to the basket. His ability to shoot well from the three-point arch allowed him to be our leading scorer. Mike will have to take his game to another level next season to improve on what he did in 2004-05. Frank Clair can swing back and forth between the perimeter and post. We will probably play him more inside this coming year. With his perimeter skills and length, he has an advantage at the four spot. Frank missed the spring semester playing even though he was NCAA eligible, because of a MAC semester eligibility rule for freshmen. The league should remove that stipulation so it conforms to NCAA rules. Frank had a good spring semester in the classroom and in fine shape for next year. We added a little bit more toward the end of the semester, as far as conditioning. Our team had so many close games this year that were literally decided by one possession, that we wanted to emphasize how important those possessions can be. The team got up early before class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for 10 sessions. Each conditioning session was an investment for one possession next season. We ran distance, sprints and did some interval training. We are going to put those 10 possessions to work for us in 2005-06.