Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal

Thursday, March 3, 2005

GET OUT OF TOWN

We are back to practicing exclusively outside now. Fortunately we are currently having the type of weather that nicely dovetails with having practice out of doors. It could not have been much nicer in sunny Southern California than it was in the old Fort (Collins) yesterday.

We have had two very good and well-paced practices the last two days after taking Monday off. Just get better, baby. That’s all I think about, getting us to be more and better of what we already are.

My first message to the team the first time I saw them after the CC game, on Tuesday afternoon, was something to the effect of, "That was nice. Now let’s get on with it!" As the week has moved on my focus has been more and more on what we didn’t do well enough last Saturday.

I am never one who makes them sit and listen to the reliving of the whole game through my eyes in a monolog setting. Many coaches do that.

OUCH, BABE

We are piling up some ankle injuries and the like these days, but I guess that is part of it all, and part of a long season.

We plug along, and we have shown some depth. We need more (depth), however. Have I ever heard anyone (coach) say, "We have too much depth"? I don’t think so. Wait, yes I have. It was me, and it was something about goalies, and it was not that long ago.......

A pair of word buddies, "shin splints" are often on many sets of lips in this early, conditioning part of the season. Fortunately I have not heard the two words uttered as a single problem lately, so that is good. That Nexturf stuff is fantastic.

NO PANE, NO GAIN?

We have spent the entire early season of practice without ever having to use the CSU 1933 Model T Field House to work in. This means that we will have made it through a year without breaking a single pane of glass, a team record to be sure. Breaking glass is something that is pretty easy to do with an 80 mile an hour spinning, bouncing lacrosse ball in a small building with hundreds of these panes. Breaking them (window pane) always turns into a bit of an administrative pain, so coming through "Windex clean" feels good.

This "winter ball" thing was challenging, but thanks to many factors it actually was pretty effective as a body of work, and it was relatively painless, too. I’m sure that I have jinxed us now, and we will get the 100 years blizzard on Saturday, just in time for our little date with D.U. Club team in our first home game of the season.

NEW (OLD) KIDS ON THE BLOCK

I saw something today that confirmed my earlier in the season suspicion that the Michigan Wolverines will be the real deal this year. That something was not the fact that they had beaten Arizona and done it in Tucson in a #5 vs. #6 battle for poll position yesterday. The eye opener was the totally dominant 12-1 score. I have always looked at the Wolves as dangerous, and they always have been a treacherous match-up for us wherever we have played them.

I thought and think BYU has great team possibilities this year. They have skill and quickness on offense. Arizona "surprised" them 9-8 last week, so I don’t know what to think about all that. I do know they (BYU) have already started to prepare for our arrival on their web site…..

The early returns on Sonoma State have the Sea wolves looking strong, and of course, our opponent a week from Saturday, Santa Barbara, seems to currently have a lock on the MDIA bi-weekly national-election-of-a number-one team.

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