It all starts with a sleepless, caffeine-fueled binge on Selection Sunday. It ends whenever the season does.
Stephen Gentry of Texas A&M, Matt Lisiewski of Maryland and Nick Terruso of Purdue have spent late nights throughout the last week preparing for their team's opponents - and, more taxing, potential opponents - in the NCAA tournament.
They are film-editing managers.
They work all season recording, compiling and editing game film for coaches and players to prepare for upcoming games. The prep time is short - fewer than three days before traveling to far-flung cites such as Spokane where their teams play schools they may have never faced.
``On Selection Sunday, I worked from 7 p.m. until 4 a.m. - and then compiled more for the coaches before we left on Wednesday afternoon,'' Terruso said. ``We had six games on Siena, 10 on Texas A&M and another six on Utah State, all on the laptop and cut up.''
The work on Utah State was for naught. Those Aggies lost to A&M's Aggies in the first round, setting up a Purdue-A&M meeting in Sunday's second-round.
And the work continues.
``Once we're out here, for players we set up team meetings and go through film there, and we have a staff room where we set up video for the coaches,'' Terruso said.
Lisiewski had to compile game film from Houston, Michigan State and New Mexico State, and then fly from the Washington, D.C., area to Spokane less than 48 hours later, with all of the required game film in tow.
Lisiewski diligently records and stores as many games as he can during the season, especially the early season tournaments, to get a jump on possible postseason opponents.
Or even improbable ones.
``I had at least 13 Houston games recorded. You never think that you'll need the Houston versus Alaska-Anchorage game. But guess what? I needed it,'' he said.
On the road, Lisiewski travels with a DVD burner and a big stack of DVDs, and he brings the capability to cut and edit anything to stay prepared. He also brought with him games from every team in Maryland's bracket.
Gentry, who said he watched eight games on Utah State, pulled an all-nighter on Selection Sunday.
Gentry is in his third season with the Aggies. He was a three-year letter-winner for Gonzaga as a teammate of Adam Morrison. Then he spent a year as a video intern with the NBA's Miami Heat. There, he says he learned a lot from Hall of Fame coach Pat Riley, whom he called a video mastermind.
``If you know anything about pro basketball, you know that Pat Riley demands the most out of his video guys in the NBA,'' Texas A&M coach Mark Turgeon said.
``His experience with Coach Riley at that level (helps) us take video to a new level here.''
Boosters have helped, too. Thanks partly to the gifts of donors fired up over the Aggies' surge to basketball prominence that began under former coach Billy Gillispie, Texas A&M is completely digital with the use of laptops and servers. Coaches and the players carry Apple laptops to watch film. Each player has his own computer in the locker room back in College Station that can tap into a server and pull up any game in their digital video library.
``It's an unbelievable system. No DVDs. No VCRs. It's all digitized,'' Gentry said, proudly. ``Our guys really love watching film.
``We use video unlike anyone else in the country.''
