In first year coaching Roosevelt, former Illini star Dee Brown has Lakers leading their conference

CHICAGO (CBS) -- Dee Brown is in his first season as a head coach at Roosevelt University, an NAIA school in the loop, and so far so good.

The former Illini and Proviso East star has the Lakers in the running for a conference title, with an emphasis on running.

Dee Brown the coach is a lot like Dee Brown the player.

"Everybody saw my playing days. They know how I play. They know who I am in this community. So, for me, I've always been a natural born leader," Brown said.

What he's doing as a leader is clearly working. The Lakers are on top of the Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference standings, and having their best season in years.

"It's a completely different program. Coach Brown has brough in a culture, and he's going to be a great coach here for a long time I think," said grad student guard/forward Matt Myers.

"He's a players' coach, most definitely. He cares about us. He shows us a lot of different things. He teaches a lot of different things that we don't really know about on and off the court," said grad student forward Yuri Swinford.

"It's always about we, us, and just doing everything together. If you ever looked at any team I played on, we had great leadership, we had really good players who did their role. We liked each other. We shared the ball. We were selfless. So I'm all about unity. It means a lot to me that I'm actually able to lead a program," Brown said.

The intensity that Brown brings as a head coach is clear at Roosevelt practices. What's also clear: no one is going to outwork this Lakers squad.

"He pushes us so hard every day in practice. He set a standard for us before the season even started, and he wants us to meet that standard every day in practice, so every day is a grind," Myers said.

"The standard is the standard. You know, when  you start talking about what you believe in, and how we're going to play, we want to be the toughest, hardest playing team in the league. So you gotta practice hard, you gotta do tough things. Conditioning is not a punishment, it's a requirement. You have to be in shape," Brown said.

That means a lot of running at practice, something that took a little getting used to at first.

"I'm not going lie. It was kind of tough, honestly. It was kind of tough. Coach got us acclimated really well. He let us know, coming from the big boy level, that it's a challenge. That's just half of what they do every day," Swinford said.

It's paid off with this team racking up the victories, and they've even noticed their opponents wearing down late in games.

"Every game is like, I'm looking at everybody on the other team and they're gassed, and we're going still up and down playing. He wants us to score in seven seconds. So it's a lot easier when you're conditioned," Myers said.

And that has the Lakers in position for their first conference championship.

"One game at a time. We talked about this earlier that we have an opportunity. You can't let an opportunity like this slip by. It's a real balanced league. Top four, top five teams can win it. If we protect home court and continue to play hard and play defense, we've got a chance to do something special," Brown said.

Roosevelt currently leads the CCAC standings at 16-2. They have a huge game at 15-3 Saint Xavier on Wednesday night.