On the Road this Week

What a game against Coe on Saturday afternoon.  A total of 28 3 pointers made in the game, in fact, together we shot 28-53 from the arc, which is over 50%.  If you are not on our team, and you are just a fan, it was a real fun game to watch.  Plenty of drama and plenty of made shots.  The end of the first half was quite the ending.  Brian Brungard makes a 30 footer, Andre Wagner makes an 18 foot fader, and Coe throws in a ¾ court shot at the buzzer.  Now that is drama all in the last 30 seconds of the first half.  The second half went as I thought it would.  The game would come down the paint.  Coe had made 10 3’s in the first half, and I knew it wouldn’t keep coming at us like that all night.  Kyle Kuenstling was the difference.  He scored inside and got to the FT line too many times in the last 10 minutes.  And we did not make our FT’s in the last 5 minutes, which is something we have done very well in the month of January.  So, we look at it as one of those nights, where Coe played a real nice game, and our defense was not great, but not terrible.  This is college basketball, and all teams are capable of beating you.  On this night, the game belonged to Coe.  We will not make excuses however.  We can play better, and we will work to be more consistent.

What a great crowd though.  1,800 people in the stands, and the game was an awesome game.

We now travel to Wartburg.  They have had some injury problems, but they have now had a week off to get ready for the last run.  We expect them to come out playing with a lot of focus and expect them to play well.  However, we expect to play well also, and we will play together, and fight it out.  It will be a great game, and one we are looking forward to.  Mitch Eslick, who is an outstanding freshman, is out with a knee injury, and that hurts them, but they have one of the most exciting guards in the league in Cashes Mason.  Cashes is a play maker, and our team better get ready for his dribble drive.

Here is a good trivia question for you.  How many teams in the 43 conferences in DIII, are undefeated in just conference play.  That means you have probably played 13 conference games at the most in league play.  The answer is exactly 6.  That is not many, and it also tells us how tough it is to win on a consistent basis.  This is a hard business.  And winning is tough to come by at times, so it is important to enjoy the whole process and see how well we can do.  Attitude is everything, and I love our guys’ attitude.  We will continue to play well, and try to improve. 

GO Beavers!!

Coach VH

Mankato

We traveled to Mankato this past weekend and things were kind of rough for us. Our hurdlers did a fantastic job this weekend. Especially Shawn Olorundami who smashed our school record in the 60m hurdles and set a big personal best in the event by running 8.39. Tanner Russ also ran a personal best by going 8.64. Justin Taylor tied his personal best by going 8.68. So our hurdlers are doing very well at this point in the year. Also preforming well was Steven Ricke who set a huge personal best in the shot put (45-10.5). The remainder of the team competed very hard but for some reason we all just looked a little flat. Sometimes you just have days like that as a team where things just don't go you're way. We just try to shake it off and move on to the next weekend. 

One thing I truely hated about this meet was how poorly run it was. The weight throw for men and women took almost 4 hours and the same can be said for the shot put. It was just rediculus how slowly the official ran things. They tried to speed the meet up by only marking everyones first throw and then anything over a minimum distance. This was a good idea in theory but they still allowed to much warm-up time and the head official proceeded to do 10 minutes of instruction before and after each flight. When you add that up to about 3-4 flights per men and women, it is over an hour of wasted time. Just a very very poorly run meet from the throws standpoint. What they really needed to do was give everyone 4 attempts with no finals and call it a day. But instead we did not get out of there until 9pm and the throws began at 11am! I love track and field but thats the reason no one watches and why there were no spectators left for the men's shot put.

 Next up we have our Dennis Young Classic meet which is always a fun meet where there are some great awards and we usually seem to come together more as a team. We are combining this with a little alumni and parent reception afterwards to have a little fun and talk about the old days. If you're an alumnus out there we would love to have as many there as possible. It should be a great time for you to catch up.

GO BEAVER TRACK AND FIELD!!!