Archive for November, 2008

Last night we had our game vs. Dartmouth.  Early on in the game we went up  18-13, forcing them to call a timeout.  They then went on a 17-2 run.  I think at halftime we were down by 10.  We had something like 4 turnovers in a row in the beginning of the second half.  Despite that, the most we were down in the second half was 12 points.  We went on some big runs down the stretch and I hit a three to cut their lead to 1 with like 7 minutes left and a 3 with 40 seconds left to cut their lead to 2.  At the end of their game, their best player had the ball in the middle of the floor around half court. I was guarding him. There was a 5 second differential between the shot clock and the game clock and with about 25 seconds he made a move and I let him get by me going to his right and he made a layup.  A couple of my teammates told me they were late in giving help and that it was their fault. I haven’t seen the film but bottom line, I shouldn’t have let him get by me at all, much less with his strong hand.

It was a disappointing loss because we are a better team than the way we are playing.  This was definitely a winnable game for our team.

If you are a college basketball fan you are probably watching the Notre Dame - UNC game that’s going on as I type this.  I’m watching it too but I’m probably looking at different things than you.  This is because our next game is against Notre Dame.  I’ll probably be guarding Ryan Ayers.  I have a strange connection with Ayers actually.  I’ve never met him but it turns out that (stick with me here) one of my best friends from high school’s brother was a good friend of Ayers in middle school somewhere in PA I think in Elementary school in Ohio.  Notre Dame is a great team and we are aware that they might be slightly favored in this game.

We are practicing tomorrow morning and coach is having the team over for Thanksgiving dinner. Last year the whole team went and we had a great time. The food was great and it was nice to just hang out.  We had a game the day after Thanksgiving last year so it didn’t make sense for any of us to go home.  This year we don’t play until Sunday so coach is letting those of us that live within a couple hours go home and come back for an evening practice on Friday.  I haven’t been home in a while so I’m really looking forward to seeing my family.

I’ll be back later with more on our preparation for the ND game. Happy Thanksgiving.

We woke up early flew from Greenville to Detroit at 9am on Monday morning. We had a short layover in Detroit and flew to Pittsburgh around 1:30. We practiced at Duquesne from 6:30 to about 8. Pittsburgh is a pretty cool place. I like seeing different parts of the country. Its always fun to imagine where I would be going to school had I grown up somewhere else.

We got up early and had a shootaround this morning around 8:30. After practice and the shootaround I had a good feeling about the game. The arena was a little old but besides a few dead spots on the floor, the court and rims felt pretty good.

We went over personnel again after our pregame meal and we felt like we matched up pretty well with them. The didn’t shoot the ball overly well in their first few games so we decided we wanted to focus on keeping the ball out of the paint and have them shoot from the outside rather than get easy buckets in the paint.

Duquesne started off the game on fire.  They hit 3 threes en route to a 11-2 start and shot the 3 pretty well for the whole game. They also were really good at getting around the basket and dumping the ball off to a slasher. I came in off the bench and played one of my better halves of basketball in the first half.  I hit a couple of threes, hit a pull up jumper, and was 2/2 on free throws.  I also had a few assists and a couple rebounds.  We went into halftime down by 9.  I didn’t have a great second half.  I turned the ball over twice in back to back posessions and on the second turnover I got a foul called on me as I chased down my turnover.  We cut the lead to 6 at one point in the second half but I think that was the closest we got.

It was a disappointing game, but the good news is we don’t have time to let it get us down.  We play at Dartmouth on Tuesday night. I’m gonna call it a night since our wake up call is coming at 4:15 AM.  Yes you read that right - 4:15 AM.  Dartmouth isn’t that easy to get to and I guess the selection of flights was limited. We don’t rent out an entire plane like the big boys.

Yesterday we had the day off from practice. I had a few errands to take care of so I took advantage of the afternoon. I got my haircut and went to Walmart to restock my room’s food and Gatorade supply. The Salvation Army bell ringers were outside the doors collecting donations and there were numerous Christmas displays throughout the store. They were also playing Christmas music. Is it just me or is it a little early for Christmas music? Time really is flying and I can’t believe that its already November 19th, but I don’t start thinking about Christmas until my calendar says December.

Today is probably one of the busier days I’ve had this year. I had class from 9:30-10:30. Got some lunch around 12. Had class from 12:30-1:30. Had a computer science lab from 2:30-4:30 and practice at 5:30. In my public speaking class we had an interesting assignment. Todays topic was Eulogies. Our assignment was to give a eulogy at our own funeral. I didn’t present mine today but I wrote the outline and it was really weird. I have no idea what I am going to do with my life so it was hard to imagine what somebody would say about my life.

I’m going out to eat tonight at a pizza place in downtown Greenville, Bellacinos with a couple of my teammates.  I get to sleep in tomorrow so I’m looking forward to that.

Last night we lost to Charleston Southern. They played well and capitalized on our mistakes. We definitely feel like we could have won the game. Coach stressed that unforced errors did us in. CSU went up by 10 or so in the first half and we ended up cutting it to 5 at the half. In the second half, they were up by as many as 15, and we cut it down to 3 with about 7 minutes to go. It hovered around 3-5 for a couple of minutes and they made some big shots to seal the victory. Jamarco Warren, their point guard was on fire. It seemed like he didn’t miss.

9:10 AM: We woke up this morning at 8:15 to get breakfast and now I’m back in my room watching some SportsCenter.  We’re leaving at 9:40 for our shootaround.  I don’t know if our coaches picked a 10:00 AM shootaround or if that was just the time slot Charleston Southern gave us. I do know that 8:15 is earlier than I have to wake up on days that I have class.

1:00 PM: We had a good shootaround. Charleston Southern uses Spalding balls instead of the Nike balls that Furman, and the majority of teams we play use. Its not really a big deal, but some guys hate using the Spalding balls cause they have a tendency to get slippery. We went over a few plays to make sure everybody is on the same page. Now we’re probably going to go to the mall to kill some time. Its good to get out and about instead of lounging around the hotel all day long.

4:30 PM: We just finished our pregame meal and now we’re hanging out in our hotel rooms. The food we ordered was delivered 20 minutes late but it was ok because we went over Charleston Southern’s personnel again. I guess there is a women’s game before ours tonight so our game will probably end up starting at 7:45. We are only going to have 30 minutes on the floor to warm up before we play. Normally we warm up for about 75 minutes on the floor with a two 7-10 minute breaks thrown in. I usually can’t wait to play so I’m looking forward to a shorter warm up. This should be a good game tonight. I played with Charleston Southern’s PG, Tovi Bailey, in an All-Star game after our senior year of high school. The West team included me Tovi (Charleston Southern), Bryson Barnes (Furman), Charles Corbin (Winthrop), Trevor Gaskins (Ole Miss), Chris Barnes (UGA), Jahaziel Howard (UCF), and myself. We went up against and lost to the East which included Kevin Anderson (Richmond), Zach Graham (Ole Miss), Lance Storrs (Georgia Tech), Jeremy Price (UGA), Terrell Bell (Virginia Tech), Andrew Goudelock (College of Charleston), Marshon Brooks (Providence), Jeremy Simmons (College of Charleston), and Zac Swansey (UGA).

Tomorrow we play Emory, a D3 team from Atlanta.   We had a good practice today and I think everybody is just ready to get the season underway.  We’ve had a long time to think about our 7-23 record from last year. Last season wasn’t fun for anybody and we’ve been working hard since last year’s conference tournament loss to Elon to prevent it from happening again.

I watched the Jets-Pats game tonight.  It was awesome to see Favre lead the Jets to the overtime win.  Its amazing how many times he has led his team to victory in the 4th quarter and OT.  I still can’t believe the Packers kicked him to the curb.

I realized I won’t be in class on Monday considering we’re playing at Charleston Southern that night.  This means that I have to do the flash animation project that’s due Monday in Computer Science tomorrow instead of at the last minute on Sunday night like I would have done.  I’m using a picture of me shooting a free throw and making the ball move across the picture simulating a shot. I’ll put it on here sometime if I can figure out how to do it.

Here is a list of 3 players I’m looking forward to watching this season. I played against all 3 of them in high school and can’t wait to see how they do this year.

Gani Lawal - Georgia Tech:
I had the opportunity to play with and against Gani while I was in high school. I played on the same team as him at a Rivals.com Georgia Hoops Showcase the summer before our Junior years of high school. We were in the last game of the day and it pitted Gani up against J.J. Hickson at the center position. This game represented everything wrong with AAU politics in Georgia. Gani played for the Georgia Stars throughout high school and J.J. played with the Worldwide Renegades. Representatives from both AAU crews went back and forth all game. Apparently JJ scored 50. This was our 3rd game of the day and there was hardly transition defense played. Probably 14-20 of those points from JJ came on uncontested dunks. Nobody seems to remember that Gani and my team ended up winning, they only bring up JJ scoring 50. Anyways, I’m looking for Gani to have a great season at Tech this year. He is a class act and one of the nicest guys I’ve played against.

Chris Allen- Michigan State:
Chris Allen is probably tied with Stephen Curry as the best shooter I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t miss. His Meadowcreek team knocked my Milton team out of the state playoffs in the sweet sixteen to end my Junior season. Even though I’m a Wisconsin fan, I can’t wait to see Chris succeed in the Big Ten. He may not be the first option on that team considering he’s part of a very talented Spartan group, but I think he’ll find ways to put up good numbers.

Chris Singleton - Florida State:
I played against Chris Singleton for his Freshman, Sophomore, and Junior years in high school. He played at Cherokee High School, a team in our region. He was a Mickey D’s All American last year. I’m not gonna lie, I though he was a great player and I knew he’d go play at a big school, but I never would have guessed he’d be a McDonalds All-American. I’m very interested to see how he does against ACC competition.

We had our exhibition game tonight. We played Newberry College, a D2 program. We got off to a slow start but ended up winning by around 20. This was much different from last years exhibition where we lost to USC-Aiken. Hopefully this will set a much different tone for the season. I was happy with how I played. I shot the ball well and also rebounded well. All week in practice our coaches were trying to get Noah States and I ready to guard their best player, Clement Martin. I think he ended up having 14 points but was only 3-10 from the floor. Our freshmen played well and I think it was good for them to get experience in a game atmosphere. My sister and my dad came up along with my dad’s parents. Its always good for us players to see our families every now and then.

We are going to practice tomorrow and go over some film. Tonight I’m just going to hang out with some of the guys and enjoy the win.

This weekend our team headed up to Charlotte to scrimmage VMI.  We practiced Saturday morning, lifted weights and left for Charlotte Saturday evening.  Charlotte isn’t a bad trip from Furman at all. It took us about an hour and 45 minutes on the bus.  When we got to Charlotte we got dinner at Macaroni Grill.  By the time we left dinner and got to the hotel I was completely exhausted.  My roommate for the trip was Tony Anderson, a redshirt junior point guard.  We watched the end of the Texas Tech - Texas game and fell asleep.

We woke up at 7:45 to get some breakfast and we were at UNC-Charlotte by 9.  We scrimmaged in their practice gym but I took a peek at their main gym.  It was WAY bigger than I would have expected.  Their arena looked about the size of UGA’s Stegeman Coliseum.

We knew VMI would be aggressive and press alot but we were not expecting them to do it on every possession.  It was a little disappointing because we were unable to run our man offense at all (due to them being in zone all day long).  It was fun to finally play somebody other than ourselves though.

I’m really glad that basketball season has started so I can stop following football.  Wisconsin’s football team has been a huge disappointment this year to say the least.  They might get into a bowl game if they win out.  The Packers lost a close one to the Titans and are now tied for second in the division.  My fantasy football team lost this week unless Clinton Portis can score 22 points for me tonight.

It should be a good week of practice this week as we prepare for our exhibition game against Newberry this Friday.