Big Sky Conference

FINDING JACK: Lopez puts defense first to earn valuable playing time

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Moments after play had paused for a scheduled media timeout, Jack Lopez remained on the far sideline in disbelief of what had just transpired. Lopez was tagged for a foul for what he thought was a standard defensive play orchestrated by his coaches to throw off the spacing and timing of Sacramento State’s offensive sets. Defending a high-ball screen, he hedged hard, stretching Hornets’ guard Marcus Graves all the way to the sideline before the whistle blew.

Lopez, with his hands high, his chest protruding and his feet sliding, had stayed in front of Graves about as well as you could expect. But to the official, Lopez had violated a rule and was saddled with a foul. To that point it had been a tough night for the senior forward. He had been bludgeoned over and over and over by the thick, long-limbed frame Hornets forward Justin Strings used to bully his way through the paint. Lopez had, as has become expected of him in his final two seasons in Missoula, rotated onto and off of opposing posts larger than his 208 pounds, and when he heard the whistle shriek and then watched the ref identify him as the guilty party, he couldn’t believe it.

He lingered and pleaded to no avail until coaches and teammates dragged him back to the bench, the look of disbelief and disgust fresh on his face.

Lopez-6724“Jack’s got a little bit of a temper and sometimes he blows a gasket and that’s his competitive drive,” Montana head coach Travis DeCuire said. “I’d rather see a kid out there have something matter that much to him than a kid that’s laissez faire and let’s things go in passing.”

While he has become one of the more consistent long-range shooters in the country over the last two years, it’s on the defensive side of the ball where Lopez has earned his minutes. Once a player who tried to block every shot in his area, the he has grounded himself; he is far more likely to take a charge than he is to return a shot. It’s a relatively new thing for the senior, who realized soon after coming to Montana from Australia, that he wasn’t as big and as athletic as those he was facing. Without the ability to reach the heights his opponents were, Lopez took a new approach and has excelled.

Lopez is routinely near the top of Montana’s hustle stats, which chart defensive stats like tipped passes and charges taken — numbers that don’t show up in post game box scores, but ones that ensure minutes on the court.

“I was just working hard because I was trying to earn minutes,” Lopez said. “I knew that if I was playing defense well that I would play. That’s where that mindset came.”

Lopez was entering his sophomore year when DeCuire was hired as Montana’s coach. DeCuire, who is the program’s all-time leader in assists, returned to his alma mater to continue the success the Grizzlies had enjoyed since Larry Krystkowiak, another former player, resurrected the program from the dark days of the Pat Kennedy era. In the years prior to DeCuire’s hiring, Montana had ranked at or near the top of the Big Sky in points allowed and DeCuire was determined to continue that. In fact, he was intent on making defensive intensity the program’s hallmark.

Lopez-5616For Lopez, who says he could count the amount of charges he took in Australia on one hand, that wasn’t an aspect of the game he was well known for. He had been recruited by Wayne Tinkle’s staff as a fundamentally sound shooter who would play the small forward position and space the floor. When his sophomore season began, Lopez found himself out of position, but slowly adapted his game to DeCuire’s style.

“As his sophomore year went he would come in and almost schematically be able to know what we were doing defensively,” remembers associate head coach Chris Cobb. “It was almost like he was a defensive specialist.”

Montana’s need for Lopez to develop into a defender capable of playing larger than his 6-foot-5 size, was in part necessitated by his prowess as an outside shooter. Lopez hit 40 percent of his 3-point attempts during the abbreviated minutes he received that first winter with Decuire. So he worked throughout the spring and summer to improve what he already thought was a strength. In his limited two-hour sessions with DeCuire and then back at home in Australia, Lopez refined his ability to shoot step-offs and off of ball screens, adapting to the areas of the floor he would be asked to find, provide spacing for Martin Breunig. The thinking was that if Lopez could provide enough resistance as a post defender and rebounder, his shooting would provide Breunig, a unanimous two-time All-Big Sky selection, enough room to work on the block.

While his minutes fluctuated during the early part of his junior season, his understanding of the Grizzlies’ defensive schemes got the attention of the coaching staff. By the beginning of conference play it was clear that Lopez was capable of holding his own in the post, while torching opponents from the outside. He scored a career-high 21 points in a win over Sacramento State and finished the year as a 46-percent 3-point shooter.

Lopez-7010“What’s important is what they do when you’re not there,” DeCuire said of the offseason work that made Lopez a reliable part of the Grizzlies rotation. “He took those things we were working on and worked on them on his own as well. I think that’s why he was able to have success.”

His accuracy from outside has carried over into his senior season: Lopez is currently knocking down 42 percent of his outside attempts, including a 6-for-10 night in a win over Northern Colorado in January. But even more so than his expertise from beyond the arc, what has allowed for Lopez to play a career-high in minutes has been his continued improvement on the defensive end.

Never one to shy away from contact — “When I’m in that position I was just happy to take that charge,” Lopez said — he has teamed with fellow Aussie Fabijan Krslovic to create the backbone of Montana’s defense. Cobb said it’s Lopez’s understanding of what Montana is trying to do that allows him to have as much success as he’s had. Often times as Montana preps for opponents, Lopez will take his turn cycling through the various concepts the Griz coaching staff conjures up before stepping off to allow more time for players that may need more reps. And if there are questions to be asked, Lopez can answer those too.

Rarely do coaches have to worry about how Lopez will react to an in-game adjustment.

“He’ll probably have the ability once he gets done playing to coach,” Cobb said.

Lopez baseline dunkLopez’s recruitment to Montana lasted nearly a year and a half, only to be completed in a few months before he packed his bags and moved to Montana. He had only seen a map of the campus, and initially thought that Mt. Sentinel was downhill from where the campus sat. He came as a shooter and then lost the coaches that brought him thousands of miles from home. Under a new set of coaches, he adapted from year to year, moving from one position to the other and doing whatever he could to get on the floor and help Montana chase an elusive spot in the NCAA tournament.

“‘What’s my role? Okay, I’ll take it and make the most of it,’” DeCuire said of Lopez’s mentality. “Then he goes and he works on strengthening himself in those areas and he’s done a phenomenal job.”

Photos by Jason Bacaj. All Rights Reserved. 

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