Hi everyone! Thanks for coming back and checking out entry #2 of the blog. All in all, last week was a very solid week for the Captains. After a tough road loss at North Carolina Wesleyan, the team responded big time in a hard fought win over Ferrum College, the #22 ranked team in the nation!

Last Wednesday, we set out to make the three-hour trek to Rocky Mount, NC, home of North Carolina Wesleyan. I'll take this opportunity to talk a little bit about the bane of many a college coach's existence: road trips.

For starters, road games are simply much more difficult to win than home games. Home teams have the benefit of familiarity with the playing court (this is important for shooting purposes). Home teams can feed off the energy of the home crowd, and they do not have to undergo the obstacle of traveling prior to the game. These issues are magnified during conference play, where emotions run high and teams are extremely knowledgeable of one another. It is no coincidence that home teams win more than 60% of games every year in college basketball.

Besides the sheer difficulty of winning road games, road trips also put a lot of pressure on assistant coaches. Things have to run as smooth as possible to get the team to the destination without any potential distractions that can take away from the focus on the game. The team bus has to be on time, the pre-game meal as to be prepared correctly, and all the equipment and team gear has to be accounted for. If you are the assistant in charge of travel and something goes terribly wrong, you just hope that you aren't sitting too close to the head coach on the bus ride!

Thanks in large part to the efforts of Coach Ross and Coach Mays, we made it to Rocky Mount without a hitch. Unfortunately, the game itself did not go as smoothly. We knew going into the game that N.C. Wesleyan was a very strong team that loved to push the ball offensively, and we did some good things during the game to combat their strengths. However, one of the keys to winning on the road is that you have to do all of the little things right – not giving up easy baskets, challenging shots on defense, coming up with loose balls and rebounds, making layups and free throws, etc. The guys played hard and fought until the very end, but ultimately we did not come up with enough “winning plays” to get the victory. Despite what happens on the court, what happens after a road loss is often the worst part of road trips – making the long ride back after a very tough loss like the one we suffered Wednesday.

You play a lot of games over the course of a college basketball season, so you are bound to face adversity at one point or another. The best teams – championship teams – learn from their setbacks and get better. This is how we spent the day after the N.C. Wesleyan game – learning from our mistakes and getting better. One of the primary tools us coaches use to do this is through film. College basketball games are very fast-paced; a lot of times players do not even realize certain mistakes that they are making. Looking at film of past games allows your players to see what they did wrong (and also what they did right) and to then work on the things they need to improve upon.

After watching film of our N.C. Wesleyan game and film on our next opponent, Ferrum, we had two very good practices leading up to Saturday's game against the #22 team in the nation and the team picked to win the USA South conference.

After a slow start that got us down double digits, the team battled back tenaciously. Our main focus going in was to limit the impact of Ferrum's All-American center Derek Mitchell. We executed our defensive game plan very well, and kept Mitchell below his season averages in points and rebounds. Unlike Wednesday's game, we made a lot of “winning plays” in this game – we took two charges, grabbed a bunch of loose balls, and overall executed on both the offensive and defensive ends. The atmosphere and the home crowd were great, as almost 1,200 people packed the Freeman Center. All of this resulted in an 80-67 win in what was probably our best-played game of the season.

The journey continues this week. Just as teams have to handle adversity throughout the season, successes also have to be handled just as well. Coach Krikorian used a very telling quote today in practice (courtesy of Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski), “When you cleanse yourself of a big victory, you may open yourself up to the opportunity for an even bigger victory.” We are progressing along, and tomorrow's conference home game against Averett presents another opportunity to move in the right direction. We hope to see you there!