If first-year coach Brad Greenberg's Highlanders learned anything as the season progressed, it was how to play defense.

Greenberg inherited a team of offensive-minded players who paid little mind to locking down an opponent. The results were predictable. Radford lost 15 of its first 20 games and started the Big South schedule with a losing record.

But in the last 10 games, Radford began to slow teams in the last five minutes of games. The Highlanders learned to string together defensive stops, and Radford won five of its last nine Big South games as a result.

"Stealing a line from an old John Lennon song, I think we got guys to realize that a working class hero is the guy to be," Greenberg said. "We were a little soft defensively early on. The teams that can stop people in the last five or six minutes are usually going to win games. It's something guys had to appreciate more than they did when we came aboard."

With every major contributor from this year's team coming back next year, Greenberg has had a platform to make an impression in his team that defense counts for something. It's an idea Greenberg expects his team to embrace as it prepares for next year.

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