Western/Windsor weekend

We had one of the hardest road trips you can have this weekend. Playing Friday night in London against Western and then travelling to Windsor to play the next night against Windsor. This was follwed by the 8 and half hour drive back home to Ottawa. We did some good things and bad things this weekend. We really seemed to struggle in transition until the second half of the Windsor game and didn't seem to be comfortable offensively most of the weekend. But to come out with 2 wins against two very good teams is definitely a positive. We are still very vulnerable, but the guys are playing hard and trying to play together, so from that perspective it was very positive. It's only November so wins and losses don't really mean very much, it is more about improvement. Hopefully we are moving in the right direction in that respect. This weekend sets up to be another tough weekend as McMaster and Lakehead come to Ottawa. Both teams present problems for us and we will need to do a good job at the defensive end to get the tempo where we want it. Both teams have been playing very well with MAC having won 3 in a row and Lakehead 5 in a row. Hopefully we can find a way to slow them down a bit and put ourselves in a position to win. I'm pretty happy with our effort level so far, unfortunately we don't execute very well, which is obviously a product of some questionable coaching. Hopefully I can find a way to better communicate the things we need to do to be successful. These two teams will test us.

Laurier/Waterloo weekend

We had a tough trip to Waterloo this weekend and played two very solid teams. Laurier gave us major problems as we had a tough time getting them under control on the offensive end. We built up a 21 point lead and gave it all away, before finding a way to get some stops down the stretch and won by 8. If they stay healthy they will be tough all year and be dangerous for anyone they play. We really didn't defend very well all weekend and hopefully we can fix that for this week. This coming weekend is the toughest road trip of the year, for a number of reasons. The first being that both teams are ranked in the top ten in the country and could easily end up in the top 5. On top of that we have to go to London for Friday and then on to Windsor for Saturday night, so the travel is difficult. This is a great test for us and will definitely show some major holes in what we are doing, which is a great thing in November. We need to realize where we are and start improving on the things that we aren't doing well. I feel we have kind of stagnated in terms of our development over the past 2 weeks, so hopefully we will either have shown some progress from this weeks practices or we learn from these games what needs to be done. We have a long way to go and hopefully we realize that we have a lot to improve.

Guelph and Brock weekend

We had two home games this weekend against Guelph and Brock. We did some good things in both and some very bad things. We really struggled covering the 3 point line in the 1st half against Brock and our best 3 shooters struggled to 0 for 12 from the 3 point line for the game. We did some decent things defensively in the second half, but really showed some holes in the first half. Full credit to Brock, as they played extremely hard and were more physical than any team we have played in the past 2 years. It took us a while to adjust to how agressive they defended us, but it should help us moving forward. This weekend we travel to Waterloo to play Laurier and Waterloo. Laurier has been playing extremely well of late with blow out victories against Queens, UQAM and National Championship contender Cape Breton as well as an impressive win against a very good Dal team- a team I feel has top 5 potential. This will be a great test for us and should expose more holes, which only helps in November. Waterloo seem healthy again and with 4 5th year guys will pose some problems in their gym, always a tough place for us to play. Hopefully we learn some more this weekend, we certainly have a long way to go as shown by our performance the past 2 weekends.

Buffalo/Cincinnati

Good weekend for us in Buffalo and Cincinnati. The scrimmage against Buffalo was very good as we got towork on some things that we've been struggling with. They were very athletic and play extremely hard. They took us out of a lot of the things we wanted to do and it was good to see how we responded, both good and bad. We then went to Cincinnati and were a little undermanned, with no Mike or Kyle, plus the 36 fouls we committed didn't help our depth either. I thought we did some very good things. We were down 10 with a little more than 10 to go, which was much better than when we played them in Ottawa. We struggled the last 10 minutes, but in fairness to the guys on the floor at the end, it was for some of them their first real game experience and it had to come against a Big East team at their place.
We are still a long way away from being a good basketball team, but I still think the kids are playing pretty hard and although we are going to have a number of setbacks this year, I do think we could compete at the end of the year. This week will be a good test as we get Guelph and Brock and Guelph is finally healthy and they always give us major problems. Hopefully we can do what we need to defensively and find a way to win a tough game.