Quinton Everett grew up a fighter. But it’s been years since the 27-year-old Montana State senior forward has thrown a fist at anyone.
Everett is the elder statesman on the MSU basketball team, the lone member of the team that came of age before social media put seemingly everything on display for the world to see. Growing up in Lakeland, Florida, you had to be tough, even if it was just to survive the good-natured tussles you had to endure with your siblings and cousins.
MSU forward Tyson Kanseyo
“Pretty much everything I know is from beating up on my siblings and things,” Everett said with a laugh on Wednesday afternoon. “Of course I was a fighter coming up. Had to be coming up in Lakeland. I used to fight, but mostly with my friends and we would be friends just a couple of minutes after we would fight. That brings you closer together. Just like this, it’s great training, it brings you together and we are having fun.”
This week serves as a sort of flash from the past for Everett and a glimpse of a new sort of conditioning future for the rest of his Bobcat teammates. MSU third-year head coach Brian Fish brought Desmond L. Wilford, a renowned boxing trainer from Omaha, to Bozeman for the week to work with the Bobcats on the sweet science.
“Boxing is the backbone of training,” Fish said earlier this week. “You have to keep your knees bent, you have to have a strong base, hands up. You have to move your feet. If you don’t do those things in boxing, you are going to get knocked out. If you don’t do those things in basketball, you are going to get dunked on.”
Each day this week, the MSU men’s team endured grueling 90-minute sessions filled with footwork drills, core conditioning and a flurry of punches thrown at standing training apparatus. Wednesday’s session, a particularly challenging portion of the regimen, culminated with the Bobcats doing core-strengthening planks while Wilford beat on their oblique muscles with gloved hands followed by each Bobcat standing and flexing their abs while Wilford forcefully struck their trunks.
MSU guard Quinton Everett hits the mitts with trainer Desmond L. Wilford. Also pictured guard Dallas Lussier
“I think this is much needed to get us tougher because we need to be tougher than last year,” said Everett, a 6-foot-2 former junior college transfer who averaged 7.1 points and 5.2 rebounds during MSU’s 14-17 season last winter. “All the guys are taking what he’s teaching us and having fun at the same time. That’s a good thing.”
During the core finale of Wednesday’s workout, Everett found himself with a cramp throughout his entire abdomen. The senior played nearly 25 minutes a game last season and his physical condition cannot be questioned. But the training employed by Wilford is much different than any sort of basketball conditioning Fish puts his team through.
“This is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be,” Everett said. “I thought basketball conditioning was hard. But what boxers go through, the training they have to do, the shoulder work they get in, all the core work is so tough. I think as a team, we are coming along with the core work, especially me.”
“It all correlates but this is more intense,” added Tyler Hall, last season’s Big Sky Conference Freshman of the Year. “It works different things and helps us mentally. It’s not easy but making it fun helps you get through it. It’s helping us, especially me with work ethic throughout the off-season. But I’m not a fighter. I’m not getting in the ring anytime soon.”
Fish spent seven seasons coaching on Dana Altman’s staff at Creighton in Omaha. During that time, Terence Crawford gained international acclaim as a junior welterweight champion while training with Wilford.
Trainer Desmond L. Wilford
MSU assistant coach Kenya Crandal is an Omaha native while Wilford wrestled at Nebraska-Omaha. While Wilford was training Crawford, he ran into Crandall in Las Vegas and Crandall said any time he could help get Wilford in front of someone, he would try. Seven years later, Fish was talking to his staff about cultivating toughness and Crandall immediately thought of Wilford.
“I told Fish I could help them gain a psychological advantage,” Wilford said. “Everything needs to be done with a purpose. Functional training. Strength and conditioning. Putting your body and mind in an elite position at all times.
“The intensity of this conditioning, the level of focus is second to none. What I always tell young athletes, professional athletes, CEOs of companies, house wives, elite mindstate. That’s all I look for. Elite mind state. You can be strong, big muscles but what about the mind? They say there is 640-something muscles in the body. But always add one because the mind is a muscle.”
Wilford’s entry into training basketball players came through friends Tyron Lue, a Nebraska alum, and Chauncey Billups, both one-time NBA guards. Wilford’s journey has included mentoring by Tim S. Grover of Attack Athletics, Michael Jordan’s personal trainer at one time, and two-time NBA scoring champion Tracy McGrady. Montana State is the first Division I squad he’s worked with.
Trainer Desmond L. Wilford works guard Tyler Hall’s mid-section with the gloves
“In basketball, you have to think about position, you have to have conditioning, you have to be on balance, you have to have agility, you have to be explosive,” Wilford said. “Hands down, man down. You come across the court, you have a shooter, hand down, man down. Same thing in boxing. You throw a punch, hands down, you going down.”
As Fish enters his third off-season at the helm for the Bobcats, he continues to rebuild the program. His out of the box thinking in hiring Wilford is the next step in the evolution of the Bobcats.
“If I’d have brought him in a year ago, this wouldn’t have worked,” Fish said. “The guys wouldn’t have understood it. But we have a veteran team now, they’ve been hearing this from me, and now it makes sense.”
Photos by Colter Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
