For most of college basketball, mid-August is vacation time.
Players, finished with the grind of summer workouts and classes, head home before the semester begins. Coaches, who spent June and July weekends on the road recruiting and weekdays running workouts, catch flights to a beach and recharge the batteries before the team returns.
But on this humid Monday morning in Fairfax, Va., the scene is far from a vacation. The George Mason men’s players that are still in town (about half of the roster) are in the team’s practice facility for workouts well before 9 a.m. Leading that workout is the new head coach of the Patriots, Kim English.