Hill Pigeons Can't Fly In The Snow, But Eagles Sure Can

In Bender Arena, Even Lehigh Is A Sitting Duck...Or In This Case, Pigeon

It is Saturday, February 6th, 2010. More than 20 inches of snow has fallen on the District of Columbia, the most the city has seen in almost nine decades. 4400 Massachusetts Avenue is a tranquil sea of white, all of the students seemingly holed up in the their dorms, enjoying a restful day off. But wait...what is that? You stand at Glover Gate, where the faintest of cheers can be heard emanating from Bender Arena. "We are the mighty...", but the sound trails off. You listen closer, "AU Eagles, where there's a fight we'll see it through..." Your eyes light up, because you know that despite the dawn of the new ice age, the AU Eagles are taking on the Lehigh Hill Pigeons with first place in the Patriot League on the line. "A-U A-U A-U", the chanting is now loud enough to drown out the Massachussets Avenue Walk Signal. You leap giddily into the air and skip toward Bender Arena, hoping you make it in time to bear witness to the Eagle's 21st consecutive home conference win...

So AU athletics, in their great wisdom, has decided to hold the men's basketball game today despite the record-setting snow. The biggest reason for this is that Lehigh is already in town. My sources tell me that for the same reason Georgetown will be playing Villanova downtown this afternoon, but who cares about those nobody teams? For those of you who can't make it to Bender Arena at 2 PM this afternoon, make sure to be checking your twitter feed often as we'll be live-tweeting from the game. I'm hoping for an absolutely packed student section, because there is no better sixth man than the Blue Crew. Here's how we're going to make some Hill Pigeon stew:

• Assists. In our last three games we have had 21, 21, and a record of 22 assists respectively. In the last 2-3 seasons combined I don't think we've had 20+ assists in the game. This means some awesome ball movement is happening and our team is finally starting to get that "passing" thing down. I'm not sure if you were here in November, but passing was certainly not our strong suit. However as predicted, it just took some time for the team to gel.
• Vlad "The Impaler" Moldoveanu. Averaging 26 ppg in our last three outings. Enough said.
• Stephen "Unstumpable" Lumpkins. He is an absolutely beast in the post lately. Keep it up.
• Simon McCormack. Even when Simon isn't sinking buckets, he's always hustling and getting the ball where it needs to be. I'd peg a lot of those record assists on him.
• Nick Hendra. Also the reason our assist totals have been so high. From December to early January he was also averaging about 13 ppg, however that dropped off recently until he notched 12 at Lafayette. An inside source of mine tells me he will be out with the flu today, however, so fingers crossed that he's feeling well enough to play. It could spell trouble if he doesn't.
  
• Daniel Munoz. Danny is finally finding his stride, notching a career-high 10 ppg at Lafayette (all in the first half). As has been said many times on this blog, this is likely because he doesn't have to constantly watch his back and worry about the starting spot any more. Still, I'd like to see Blake get it together and get back out on the court.
• Joe Hill. It was mentioned in the comments of a recent post that Joe "The Mountain" Hill has been our X Factor as of late. It's true - the late-game runs that have sealed the past few games for us have started with some clutch 3's from Joe. Keep it up, Joe!
  
• The Blue Crew. The best home court advantage in the Patriot League deserves a second mention.

Things that might keep us grounded:

• Patriot League pre-season player of the year Marquis Hall
• Patriot League pre-season first team Zahir Carrington
• Incredible talented freshmen C.J. McCollum and Gabe Knutson
• Our stone-cold performance in Bethlehem, PA earlier this season

There you have it, folks. If all gears are turning, and we avoid the mistakes we made in our last outing against the Hill Pigeons, we'll have a 4-game win streak on our hands. I'm hopeful, you're hopeful, we're all hopeful. Most of all, I hope to see you in Bender Arena at 2 PM this afternoon!

Pro Deo Et Patria and GO EAGLES,
Josh