Return from Bahamas marks beginning of fall semester

By Rob Senderoff
Head Men's Basketball Coach

We got back from our six-day trip to the Bahamas Saturday night. We won all four of our games down there, which I was pleased with. Six of the 13 guys who played on the trip were playing with us for the first time with the lights on against an opponent other than each other in practice, so it was nice to see how well they competed.

We really focused on defense during our 10 practices leading up to the trip. I thought the first half of our final game was the best that we played defensively, so it was good to see improvement throughout the week. We had 16 steals at halftime of that game, which is a phenomenal number. We rebounded the ball really well, which was nice to see as well.

I thought we had a number of guys play well on the trip. We did an excellent job of sharing the ball and averaged nearly 23 assists. A different player led us in scoring each game and 10 guys were in double-figures in at least one game. We used some different lineups to see who can play where they can play and roles are starting to be defined.

I really liked the leadership that Kris Brewer showed on this trip and in the practices leading up to the trip. While he didn’t score a ton on the trip, he had better than a 2:1 assist-to-turnover ratio, which is really important for a point guard, and I think he really established himself as a leader of the team. Kris will be a team captain this year, along with Darren Goodson and Mark Henniger.

Today is the first day off classes and it is important that our guys to get off to a good start academically. These guys have been going at it since June 10th, so I’m going to give them a week or so off to allow their bodies to recover and get established in the classroom. Then sometime during the second week of September, we’ll start conditioning and preseason activities.