Section 124: Leadership

December 4, 2011   ·   4 Comments

by Daniel Zimmet

Which senior is the team leader?

Both Mike Morrison and Ryan Pearson are keys to this Mason basketball line up.  Coach Hewitt has made it clear that these two guys are his leaders.  It has to put a ton of self-assurance in those two guys to have a brand new head coach sees an instant leadership role in both of them.

Last year the clear leader on the team was senior guard Cam Long, but this season was a question mark as to which one of the three seniors would take the role as the team leader both on and off the court.  Since Andre Cornelius ran into some legal trouble in the preseason, he had to have been counted out as the team leader.  That left us with Morrison and Pearson to decide between.  When Coach Larranaga left, the team made a decision to have one player representative give a statement regarding his decision.  The chosen one was none other than Morrison, a rising senior at the time.  Now that doesn’t necessarily make Morrison the team leader, but clearly the team felt like they saw him as a person who they wanted to addresses the media and represent the entire team.

Players with high amounts of emotion always draw attention to themselves.  Morrison and Pearson would probably be the firsts to admit that they sometimes let their emotions get the best of them on the court.  However, their teammates clearly react to their passion and get fired up right alongside them.  Not only do they get their teammates fired up, but the fans get into the game even more as well.  I always notice when Morrison starts to get upset about something, Pearson immediately steps in to try to calm him down.  On the other hand, Morrison does the same exact thing for Pearson.

Strictly statistically speaking, Pearson is the easy pick to be the leader of this team.  He leads the team in average points per game (19.8), rebounds per game (8.4), as well as time on the court averaging 32.1 minutes per game.  That stat line doesn’t lie; Pearson is the backbone to this team’s performance.  However, team leaders aren’t always picked from just leading in stats.

Team leaders step up in big situations and want the ball in their hand when the game is on the line.  On the other hand, they pick players up when they go cold, and keep the team comradery in check at all times.  This year’s team is all about playing for the name on the front and not the name on the back.  Both Morrison’s and Pearson’s Twitter handles have been changed to @ForTheTeam_22 and @ForTheTeam_24, respectively.  It is clear that the team leadership position will contently have to be shared between the two of them.  They both work together, to play for the team while leading with their emotions as well as their statistics.  They’ve embraced being team leaders, and they are hungry and ready to lead Mason Nation back to another NCAA Tournament bid.