Monday, April 28, 2003

TODAY WAS TOO NORMAL – IT IS SCARING ME

Today we had a practice that almost resembled the old days. The weather was decent, we worked on a bunch of things, and there isn’t a game tomorrow or the next day. I am concentrating on a little individual teaching, and a lot of team conditioning this week. I want to be careful and not overdo the running. At the same time, the more they run now, the clearer their heads will be then. Four games in four days are grueling any way you look at it.

I don’t want us to "over train". I even told two players today that I don’t care if they even practice this week. I want their focus to be to get healthy. I used to have a no practice, no play rule, but that went out the door when I started attracting 20 year-old geriatrics to the team a few years ago. Some of these kids have played so many games in so many sports that their bodies are wrecked by the time they are 22 years old.

SOWING THE SEEDS FOR ST. LOUIS

Tonight we will find out where we will be seeded for the National tournament. UCSB handled Sonoma with somewhat surprising ease to win the league title for the the WCLL. What this might mean for us is that we could end up at #3. We have been seeded #3 many times. Could we be there again? It will feel like home. I am a bit amused by the fact that we easily could drop from #2 all the way down to #3 in spite of the fact that we won our league while #2. It doesn’t matter to me either way. We have done nothing in impressive or emphatic fashion all year. Our scores aren’t going to scare our opponents. All I wanted was to be a top 3 seed, and that would seem to be a done deal, whether it be at #2 or #3.

I admit that the score, UCSB 14 – Sonoma 9, got my attention, especially since it was in Rhonert Park at SSU. The Gauchos certainly earned the #1 seed with that impressive win. I read that Sonoma had not lost at home since 1998. That is a long time ago. Santa Barbara is going in to this tournament looking like the team to beat, but the reality is that anything can happen in a four-day tournament. As soon as I find out who we play I will put all my energy towards them, because they, whoever they are, can step up from whatever seed they came from, and smack us in the face.

WHO’S ON TAP

I don’t want us to reinvent ourselves for next week. I am happy with this team. Maybe we are not a juggernaut, but we got spunk. I just want to have some good practices before we leave, and then once we get there, let ‘er rip, and see what happens. Tournaments are great. It’s like they have a life of their own. You need to get there and see what happens. You can’t sit in your office and plan how it all will go, because you have no idea what the second day is going to look or feel like. There is only one day and one game, the one we have against whoever, and at whatever time a week from Wednesday. The only thing I know is that I won’t know much of anything about whoever, whoever they are, except that they would like very much to beat us.

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