The basketball team's game day experience starts well before tip-off

Basketball is a game dictated by emotions and mental preparation as much as it is by physical skills, and what happens in the hours before the game is crucial for the Northwestern basketball team before it takes on Michigan at 8 p.m. Tuesday night.

Assistant coach Armon Gates arrives at his office at Welsh-Ryan Arena to go over film up to 12 hours before the game, and he said he doesn’t really go home at any point up until the game is over.

However, the players don’t start trickling in until just an hour and 45 minutes before tip-off, and after getting taped up, they split up and work with position-designated assistant coaches for 30 to 45 minutes. Then it’s time for the team stretch with strength and conditioning coach Mike Schweigert, or “Coach Schwag,” exactly one hour before tip-off.

Directly after the stretch is a shootaround on the court, which on Tuesday includes an impromptu dunk contest, about 45 minutes before tip-off. After the team comes back to the locker room, Gates gets ready for gametime in his own unique way.

“I’ve got a ritual where I work out as soon as shootaround’s over,” Gates said. “I grab the pregame meal, put it in my office, go work out, get pumped and swag. I have rap music blasting, and I come back over and eat and shower up. It’s a pregame lift.”

Meanwhile, freshman forward Gavin Skelly, known for being a high-energy player, is trying to tame the beast inside as the clock ticks.

“Before the game I’m actually the calmest on the team,” Skelly said. “I keep to myself, I’m really shy and it’s all in my head. I don’t think a lot of my teammates realize it’s what I do. I’m just thinking ‘what do I need to do in this game, what we’re going to do as a team, what the opponents are like, what they do.’”

As the 8 o'clock hour draws nearer, the assistant coaches come to the locker room and get the players riled up to face the Wolverines.

“It’s a circus in the locker room,” Gates said. “I bring a ton of energy, [assistant] coach [Patrick] Baldwin brings a ton of energy, and he’s the one that bleeds all the purple, being an alumnus. [Assistant] coach Brian James brings that humor from all his past experiences. It’s a lot of energy and our guys feed off it, I believe.”

After "the circus," it’s time for one last shootaround a few minutes before the game starts. The ‘Cats run out from the northwest (what a coincidence) corner of the court out behind columns of smoke and cheerleaders holding flags that spell out “W-I-L-D-C-A-T-S.”

When the game finally starts after the Senior Night ceremony and the National Anthem, Skelly says it’s tough to keep the energy balled up inside if he’s sitting on the bench, which he does for all but two minutes tonight.

“Sometimes I just explode because I love the game and the camaraderie,” Skelly said. “It’s difficult sometimes to keep to my own, I’ll have teammates or coaches telling me to calm down, or the referees telling me to sit down. That’s one thing I have to struggle with.”

Gates exudes energy from start to finish, too, hopping up from his seat whenever the ‘Cats are playing defense, encouraging the crowd to make noise and his players to get their hands up and “stay active!”

The ‘Cats miraculously win a double-overtime thriller, 82-78 over Michigan, and if the pregame motivation session was a circus, the postgame celebration is downright anarchy. Head coach Chris Collins is drenched in water, as is customary at this point, as the team jumps around and screams, letting all of their feelings out in a 16-second outburst of pure joy.

Inside the winning locker room with the #B1GCats pic.twitter.com/Mcc8Ol5wGF

— NU Men's Basketball (@NUMensBball) March 4, 2015

Gates said NU’s recent winning ways and their more outward displays of emotion – pregame and postgame – are closely related.

“Emotions are the one of the most underrated things that go along with the game of basketball,” Gates said. “The energy in one little play that can set off a crowd or a team can change the game. Our guys are starting to believe and show a lot more emotion than they have in the past, and our crowd has been amazing and they have been feeding off it, I think the most.”