So this letter got sent out to some season ticket holders (I didn't receive it, but maybe it got lost in the interwebs). Anyway, from Eddie Jackson:
Greetings,
As the 2009 year comes to a close I wanted to reach out to you and give you an update on your 2009-2010 American University Eagles. We got off to a slow start in non conference play, in which our inexperience played a key role in a few of our defeats. Although, we played hard and competed we had to learn what it takes to win games.
As a staff, we have realized that experience cannot be taught, it has to be learned through participation. We started our season with 8 games in 19 days. Collectively, our staff always felt that we needed more time to work on ourselves. As we prepared for games and the level of practices increased, we found ourselves with an overwhelming amount of things to learn and work on with very little time between games. Our team stuck together and remained positive. After seven attempts, we earned our first victory over Howard University.
Once fall semester classes concluded, we took full advantage of the opportunity to have consecutive days to practice. History has shown that Coach Jones’ teams normally make vast improvements over the winter break. We have found this year to be no different. Our focus has been on becoming a better offensive executing team, more disciplined defensively, and sustaining playing at a high level for longer periods of time. Recently, we benefited from our previous lessons learned, and all the hard work and focus of the last week of practice, when we traveled to Chicago and defeated our BIG EAST conference opponent DePaul.
Although the moral of the team has been very positive through our growing pains thus far, it was an incredible feeling to accomplish a victory of that magnitude in the way that we did. All season we have emphasized the need to play harder than our opponents for forty minutes, to value possessions, and most importantly to trust and have fun playing with each other. Together, we accomplished all those things that night. It shows the character that we are building, the
dedication to hard work and progression of our team.
We thank you for all your continued support. We wish you a very Happy Holidays and Happy New Year. We invite you to come see us play this year!
Sincerely,
Eddie Jackson
A very nice season-to-date recap from Coach Jackson.
I want to echo his sentiment that you all have Happy Holidays (Like the song Feliz Navidad, I too want to wish you a Merry Christmas). However, Happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, etc. etc. Oh and Happy New Year. Everybody can get behind that.
See you on Sunday with the Florida preview.
Pro deo et patria and HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Thanks to Eddie Jackson for providing the warm greetings and the insight into AU basketball.
ReplyDeleteAs much as we would all like to, you can't 'magic up' a solution to a problem. You can't just 'finish better' around the basket or make 3-pointers or reduce turovers just by wishing. It takes hard work, sure, but also adjustment and tailoring your strategies to best fit your personnel.
I am highly encouraged by the new offensive sets and schemes that I've seen in the last three games. The coaching staff is definitely going in the right direction. You can't just bury Lumpkins under the basket. Even the worst teams will eventually get a clue and smother him once he takes a dribble. So I am very much liking our recent ball movement. To wit, we have greatly reduced turnovers against some of our toughtest competition. Only about 11 TO's a game in the last three, as where we went through an ugly four-game stretch (Howard, Fairfield, UMES, Manhattan)averaging over 20 per game. Nice work(!) and an early Christmas present for AU Fans!
So here is my AU BBall Christmas wish list:
Wish #1: There are certain kinds of turovers we need to avoid, like leaving Blake Jolivette in a one-on-one situation in the backcourt. We need to move away from beating pressure via the dribble alone, we need to break it through the pass. This takes a whole-team commitment.
Wish #2: Riley Grafft to improve his rebounding. This will take time, but he has all the potential in the world. For someone with such great ups, he seems to do too much standing around and reaching instead of finding a body and surging to the ball. It's hard to learn boxing out when you're in a zone; it's unnatural. But Lumpkins is doing far better than Grafft on this score.
Wish #3: I'd like to see us eschew the collapsing 3-2. I proposed the 1-3-1 earlier, but this is an entirely different set with bringing your point guard down to run the baseline, so this it is probably asking too much for Xmas. Regardless, I'd like to see us make it more difficult for other teams to comfortably handle the ball on the perimeter against us.
So there you have it. Keep up the good work, everyone, and I am really looking forward to slow, steady improvemnt for our Patriot League schedule.
Solid analysis and commentary, Steve!
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