D3hoops.com Daily Dose

Another year of hoops is here! I have to say, after sitting on the bench watching all of last season I’m pretty excited about this one! It is good to be back in a lot of different ways. After my injury last year it has made me appreciate different things that come from not just being around the game, but with playing the game.

It’s great to feel some pressure while being at the free-throw line by myself. It’s great to hit a few shots in a row. It’s great to have total confidence that the next shot is going in. It’s great to call a play in a huddle and have it executed just like I picture it in my head and have A.T. (Aaron Thompson) drain a three. It’s great being in the locker room with my teammates making fun of each other’s girlfriends or pulling pranks.

This past weekend was a fun one for the Washington U. basketball family. Tyler Nading and Tom Blount are both from Colorado and we had our opening tournament in Colorado Springs at Colorado College. It gave them the opportunity to show off our team and play in front of a lot of their friends, family, high school coaches and teammates that have never gotten the chance to see them play in college. It’s awesome that Coach Edwards is able to schedule tournaments like this, our tournament over Thanksgiving at Anderson University (close to Cam Smith’s home) and over winter break at Elmhurst College (we have a handful of people from the Chicago area) to allow friends and family the opportunity to see us play.

We won the tournament championship this past weekend after victories against North Park and Colorado College. When you walk in the gym at CC there is a big painting on the wall saying “Altitude 6,212 feet… Breathe Deeply!” and man they weren’t kidding. After the first game I was ready for the oxygen tank. My good buddy and conference rival in high school, Nick Williams plays for North Park and he even needed IV after the game—I’m not sure if it was just the altitude but it was definitely noticed by quite a few of our players too. Our exhibition game against Division II Missouri-St. Louis prepared us really well for the North Park game because of NPU’s athleticism and the different defenses they threw at us. I know they were shorthanded for a number of reasons but I’m sure they’ll turn some heads and knock off a few teams in the CCIW this year.

The next day we took on an emotionally charged CC team. CC was winless last year and they were coming off their first win in quite some time before taking us on in the championship game. I can promise this—that team is going to win more than one game this year if they play with that energy and intensity. That program is definitely going in the right direction and they have a nice group of guys. We got off to a good start but we were never really able to put them away. They hung around and hung around until tournament MVP AT buried a few threes at the end of the game to seal the deal.

I couldn’t be much more excited for our game this Saturday! Augustana is now 2-0 and we’re 2-0 and it should be a pretty fun battle between #1 and #2. Obviously it isn’t do or die at this point (like it was last March) but it will be a great measuring stick early in the season for both teams.

Until next time,
Sean

P.S. I want to thank Pat for giving me the opportunity to exercise my player-option on the second year of my blogging deal. I needed a gig in these tough economic times!

Hello, my name is Megan Scheele and I am the only senior on the Edgewood College women’s basketball team. I came from a small town near Madison called New Glarus.

As I enter the first month or so of practice and think about the upcoming season, I’m thinking to myself, I can’t believe I’m a senior and this is going to be my last year playing basketball here at Edgewood College.  I remember coming in my freshmen year being so nervous and didn’t talk much at all; oh, how times have changed for me!  Now I’m the only senior on the team and have lots of freshmen and newbies coming in the same way I was, nervous and scared to talk.  But I tell myself I can’t think of this as being my last year; I say to myself, let this be the best year. 

In my eyes as the team practices; we get better each day, we get to know one another, we see what everyone brings to the table, but most of all we work hard.  All of those things right there are what make me believe that this will be the best year.  We are a young team having one senior, two juniors, six sophomores, and four freshmen, but look to use what everyone has to offer and come together as a team and be a powerful team in the NAC. 

Our conference is very competitive and you never know who’s going to win each night someone plays… this is something I love and makes it fun to compete in.  We are a very team oriented program and live up to that.  We play team defense, win or lose as a team, but most important we stay together through the ups and downs of the season.  We start off our season this weekend up in Adrian, Michigan and we participate in a two day tournament.  We can’t wait to start play and are very excited for the season to get underway. 

Just writing to let people know that we have some new Insider bloggers coming to D3hoops.com this season. We should start seeing blog posts from Iowa, New York, Texas and Wisconsin starting soon, as well as Insiders returning from last season, if they are interested.

Sean Wallis, who blogged for us last season as his Washington-St. Louis team made their run to the national championship, is healthy and ready to go on the floor for the Bears, and on the Net as well from what we hear.

Also, we’ll have our first Around the Nation column of the season coming out tonight, all in preparation for Saturday’s tipoff of the 2008-09 season!

The UW-Platteville men’s and women’s basketball teams are overseas. They will check in with Division III basketball fans from time to time. Jeff Skemp is our correspondent.

Our final days spent in Ireland are starting to wear on everyone involved. The trip has been great, but many of us on the team can’t wait to get home to have a nice greasy McDonald’s burger, or a Mountain Dew. These things are a necessity to college students.

As far as the tours have gone, yesterday (Monday), we visited a beautiful Abbey at Kylemore. On our way there we traveled through many peat bogs and around mountains. The countryside of Ireland is as green as we heard about before coming, and is very beautiful. After visiting the Abbey we went to a Celtic (pronounced Keltic) crystal factory and looked at the amazing pieces on display, and then had the opportunity to watch a cutter work on cutting a candy dish. His quickness and precision was a site to see.

The athletes tried to get out of the last day of touring to walk the city of Galway and finish up any last souvenir shopping that needed to be done, but this idea was vetoed, and all ended up going out to see a city called Athenry, the only Medieval-walled town in Ireland with the walls still intact. Following this brief tour we were then able to spend the rest of the day free before coming together for our pregame meal.

The men and women both won their last games respectively, the men winning by a final score of 86-55 over the GMIT All-Stars. The opponent was probably the best team that the men saw, and the game was very physical. The Pioneers had great individual efforts from Curt Hanson with 26 points, Jeff Skemp with 20 points and Mike Shaw with 19. The lone senior on the trip, Berent “Bear” Froiland scored his only points of the trip with an and-one situation which brought the crowd to a standing ovation. The women beat the Maree Ladies 66-36, led by Lisa Grantman’s 18 points. The Pioneer men and women ended the trip with a combined 6-0 record.

The night ended with parents ordering pizza for the group and spending one last time socializing and taking group pictures. We depart from the hotel at 3:15 a.m. and will arrive back at Chicago O’Hare at about 12:30 p.m. Again, the trip was great except for the sickness that went around, and there will be many stories to share by all who were involved.

The UW-Platteville men’s and women’s basketball teams are overseas. They will check in with Division III basketball fans from time to time. Jeff Skemp is our correspondent.

The third day of the trip started with a morning breakfast and free time for the team to shop, but mainly to catch up on sleep. At 11:45 a.m. the men’s team took a tour of Trinity College, which holds the famous Book of Kells. Following the short tour we had more free time to walk the city of Dublin on our own, and do more souvenir shopping. We came together at 2:30 for a team pregame meal and left for the basketball arena at 3:30 to play the Irish National 21 Under team.

The men played first and struggled during the first quarter but continued to keep playing hard and got a spark from the bench into the second period as the Pioneers started to pull away. The third period saw the Pioneers continue their dominance, and the fourth quarter was more of the same as UWP won 81-29. Mike Shaw led all scorers with 22 points and Charlie Lohoff was the only other player in double figures with 10 points. Curt Hanson had 9 and Jeff Skemp 7 points. Eleven of the 15 players for the Pioneers scored in the game as there was a balanced attack. The team was able to eat pizza supported by people on the trip, and will spend their last, hopefully memorable, night together in Dublin.

The Pioneers will leave Dublin tomorrow (Thursday) and move onto Killarney for three days. There they will continue touring as well as play another game.

The UWP women followed the men’s win with a 71-59 victory against the Irish U21 team. Lisa Grantman had 18 points and Megan Guernsey scored 14.