They're messin' with the wrong Bird...

Well, Eagles fans, it happened. The Randolph-Macon Yellow Jackets got the best of our young team. There’s nothing left to do than trudge on to the…next exhibition game! That’s right, the college basketball gods have graced us with a second glorified practice to get in shape before the regular season starts! We certainly need it, since the only thing uglier than the College of the Holy Cross is our ball handling last Tuesday. I can only imagine what Coach Jones might have been saying (read: shouting emphatically with lots of cussing) in the locker room to our guys post-game. It certainly couldn’t have been pretty.

Our opposition this Sunday will be the Catholic University of America Cardinals. Yes, that same school down on the other end of the Red Line. They are members of the Division 3 Landmark Conference, and indeed they will be flapping their little red wings across town to Bender Arena…and limping back out again after. We have a bone to pick with Division 3, and fortunately this time our competition is a little less nationally ranked. This isn’t to say CUA isn’t a decent D3 team, they did win the D3 national championship about eight years ago.

That was almost a decade ago, though, and this year’s Cardinal squad isn’t quite so deadly. Beyond sophomore Jason Banzhaf, who was named by D3hoops.com (apparently Division 3’s only real basketball authority) as a D3 All-American and All-Region player, there shouldn’t be too much to worry about come Sunday. See the lovely graphic above for reference. Unfortunately I have little data on how the Cardinals fared last season, as CUA hasn’t deigned to post last season’s schedule up on their website yet. 2007-08 was a decent year for them, but that just won’t be good enough. It takes a truly top-notch D3 team to take down our Eagles, and that’s what R-MC was (and I need not remind you the game was CLOSE). Catholic just doesn’t have that. Alright, on to the (pseudo-)analysis…

Here’s what we need to do:

• Tighten up the ball handling. Seriously, this cannot be emphasized enough. We can’t drop the ball, completely turn our backs to hoop while an opponent’s driving right under it, or take bonehead three-point attempts with thirty seconds left in the second half when it’s all tied up.

• Be confident. We can’t be afraid to take shots. We’re going to have a serious height advantage between Lumpkins and Grafft (who are looking to be a lovely frontcourt duo, I might add). I swear there was a guy on RM-C’s team that made Derrick Mercer look gigantic. D3 players just don’t have the height.

• DE-FENSE DE-FENSE DE-FENSE. This wasn’t really a problem last Tuesday. In fact, it might have been the only thing we really had going for us. We set up a good screen and generally made it difficult for them to shoot…while we were actually by the net. Let’s limit turnovers and play on our terms. If we can do this we can keep their scoring low.
  

• Be there. This one’s entirely on the fans – I know this is still the pre-season, but it’s really the team’s last chance to truly figure out what works before the real challenges begin. There’s some true promise in this team, and this is your opportunity to see it shine early on. Please come out, and please cheer LOUD. Catholic might actually be able to muster up a few folks to come down due to their proximity, and for the love of whatever deity you choose I do not want to see more red than BLUE in those stands. Of course if you’re reading this, you’re probably unscrewing the cap to your bottle of blue paint already, so I’m likely just preaching to the choir here (Catholic joke, get it?).

Finally, a correction from my last entry, a neat factoid, and some thanks:

• As one astute commenter pointed out, I failed to mention Frank Borden as I briefly waxed nostalgic about last year’s superhero squad. Frank was a consistent starter and an absolutely indispensible member of the team. His defense of the net was crucial to our success, and we’re going to have a great post about what he’s up to these days coming very soon. Hint: he’s still playing basketball, and his Spanish is probably a lot better than it was last year. Here’s a great screenshot of the love ESPN.com had for Frank for about 15 minutes right after last year’s tournament game against Villanova. Sadly, once ESPN realized 'Nova actually won they replaced this picture with a more prominent image of a Wildcat player. Lame, ESPN, really lame…

• I feel a bit bad for Vlad. When R-MC downed George Mason in an exhibition last year, he was on that team. He’s now seen them take down his Division 1 team two years in a row. Poor guy. He did look rather dapper during last week’s game, though. Can’t wait until he’s in a lovely BLUE uniform instead.

• Recently Bill took the opportunity to thank you, our readers, for helping us to reach a milestone of 92 unique visitors in one day. This past week, however, we’ve averaged 100 visitors a day and set a new record with ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY EIGHT unique readers this past Wednesday! AU Basketball Central was loaded over 300 times as well. We celebrated by purchasing our own domain name, so welcome to the constantly improving auhoops.com!

I will see you all this Sunday, November 8^th, at 4:30 PM in Bender Arena! Be LOUD, be BLUE, GO EAGLES!

Pro deo et patria,
Josh