“It’s been a crazy, I guess about seven weeks now since I took over the job,” Hoiberg said at the Big Red Blitz event in Fremont. “I’ve got two points coming back from last year’s roster with Thor [Thorbjarnarson], he’s the only guy that has any points or experience from last year’s team … We’ve got 11 new guys on our team. It’s going to be a lot of experimenting this summer with our practices. We’ve got a trip coming up to Italy and we’re going to have the chance to have 10 free practices leading into that to hopefully give us a head start going into the season.”
After scrambling to put together a roster, it’s time for Hoiberg to start to get to know his players. Summer workouts began on Sunday. However, Hoiberg won’t have the full complement of 16 players for this first session, which adds a wrinkle to the offseason process of building chemistry and learning what the players are capable of.
“The first summer session we should have 10, and that includes Charlie Easley and Jace Piatkwoski, two players that are going to walk on for us, and we really like both those guys,” Hoiberg said. “Then we’ll get a few others that are finishing up academics and a few others — Yvan [Ouedraogo], our French player, he’s playing in the under-18 World Championships, so we’ve got some that will be here and then we’ll mix them in as they come. This is a time for us to get to work with our players and get a head start going into the season.”