Ladyjack Basketball Player Blog
1/4/2008 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Jan. 4, 2008
Happy New Year from the SFA Ladyjacks!
It's been a while since the blog and we have a lot of catching up to do. Let's start off by discussing the Thanksgiving Tournament. On Thanksgiving morning, we traveled across the state by airplane to El Paso for our first tournament of the season. We were excited about being in El Paso participating the in the UTEP Classic but as the weekend progressed many challenges fell upon us as we experienced snow, cold temperatures, game cancellations and power outages.
We landed safely in El Paso, went to shoot around, and had Thanksgiving Dinner. When we entered the gym, it was exciting to see a picture of Toni Davis' dad who went to school there. We awoke on Friday and began our game preparation by eating breakfast then going to shoot around. Before going to the gym to take on the Nevada Wolf Pack, we had our pre-game meal. We played hard but came up short. It was a disappointing loss as our record dropped to one win and three losses. To over-come the defeat, the coaches challenged each of us to work harder.
On Saturday morning, it was snowing as we went to the gym for shoot-around. We were in the gym warmed up and ready to play the game against Cal State Fullerton when the tournament director received a telephone call from the city. The snow was causing havoc, which resulted in a power curtailment at the gym causing our game to be cancelled. This was a real let down because we were mentally prepared to play the game so that we could redeem ourselves from the lost to Nevada the night before.
Our next two games were against SMU in Dallas and Louisiana Tech in Ruston. We lost to the SMU Mustang team 66-60 on Wednesday in Dallas and Louisiana Tech 82-60 in Ruston.
We traveled to Columbia, Missouri where it was cold, snowy, and icy. We won the Missouri Tournament! That was an exciting time for us and the highlight for the season thus far. We played against Alcorn State and the University of Missouri. At the beginning of the game against Alcorn State, we were down 12-0. But rallied to win 71-54 in the first round of Tiger Classic. This win put us in a position to play University of Missouri in the championship game. We were a little nervous playing a Big 12 school but we were ready.
In the championship game, we trailed Missouri by 18 points but managed to outscore the Tigers and win 84-81 in overtime. This win was awesome and it felt great to beat a Big 12 school, especially on the day that the SFA men's basketball team beat the Oklahoma Sooners. Nikki Carr and Whitney Cormier were named to the All-Tournament team.
We returned to Nacogdoches and began preparing to take our finals. No games were scheduled for the week. After finals, we had two home games against Auburn and Prairie View A&M. Coming off a two-game back-to-back winning streak, we were ready to play. Unfortunately, we lost both games. We lost to Auburn 61-49 and Prairie View 66-63.
After the Prairie View game, we all went home for a five-day Holiday break. This was the first time that many of us had been home since the season began. We returned on Wednesday and began preparing for our next game. On Friday, we traveled to Tulsa, Okla., to play University of Tulsa. Unfortunately, we lost to Tulsa, 62-49. The loss dropped our record to 3-8. We struggled with our shooting from the floor and the free throw line.
Our next opponent will be the Aggies of Texas A&M on Thursday, January 3rd, at 7pm. Southland Conference play will begin the next week and we will be ready.
Therefore, until next time, I leave you with this quote from John Wooden, "Adversity often produces the unexpected opportunity. Look for it. Appreciate and utilize it."
Jessica #11
