New Year blogging

While we've had plenty of things to occupy our time, most of them aren't really the sorts of things that people seek out when they read someone's blog. I assume most people who come here either do it 1) accidentally; or 2) with an interest in learning about some of my most recent thoughts regarding the Lady Cavalier basketball team. Accidents do happen, and you are free to go on your way. However, if you hang around for a few more words, I am ready to share some of the musings floating around in my brain.

I enjoyed the action of the SAC Tournament over the holidays, but from an unfamiliar position. I joined up with Brett Rump of Indiana Web Sports to do the color commentary on the final day of the tournament. We did four games together (both girls' semifinals and both championship games) and I had a blast! That is definitely something I would like to try when my coaching days are through. Brett does a great job and really works hard for our local athletes, broadcasting games nearly every night in basketball and football season. If you are interested in some very inexpensive sponsorship opportunities, contact him at Indianawebsports.com.

We finally got a chance to return to action a couple nights ago at Dwenger. I really like Dave Scudder and he's done a great job for a long time with the GBB teams. He's had his hands full this year with one of the most brutal schedules in the state. In fact, no team in Class 3A has a tougher slate. So while their record isn't impressive, when one considers the difficulty of the games they've played, it's easy to see why. We began playing them last year and our first contest was a double-overtime thriller that easily could have been a loss instead of the 81-76 win. I expected nothing less this time as I've seen them play a couple times and they are huge! Their guards are as big our our bigs, so we knew a slow-down game would be uncomfortable for us. Fortunately, we were able to get the pace to our liking and got out to a nice double-digit lead. But, just as they did last year, Dwenger came scratching back and drew within three points in the last minute. Some clutch ballhandling and free throw shooting iced it for us 74-67.

I was even more pleased with the win after watching the game tape. It's not that we did everything so well; we just didn't have any areas of weakness, other than conditioning. Given the fact that we had not played a game in nearly three weeks and really only had light practices in the most recent week, we did a lot of things well. Everyone contributed and there were enough highlight plays to remind me why I get excited about this team and their prospects.

Tomorrow is Hoopla - a fledgling Canterbury tradition. It's hard to describe (a classic Canterbury characteristic) but there will be several events centered around four basketball games. It should be a good time and our opponent, Lakewood Park, will bring a big crowd and help to fill the gym with a great atmosphere. If you get a chance, come out and see us play. It's our first home game since November 16 - nine road games in between - so our kids are looking forward to putting on a show. We hope to see you there!