Providence College Athletics
Coach's Corner
12/1/2003 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
FRIARTOWN GREETINGS!
While we may not enjoy the cold weather we do enjoy what the cold weather ushers in - Basketball Season! We are four games into the 2003-04 season and our squad has made it very apparent that they are willing to work hard and pull together. As a staff, we are very pleased with the effort the FRIARS have displayed over the first four games. We do have many areas of the game to improve upon as the year progresses (and we will), but our effort has been outstanding!
We opened the season with a hard fought win over Furman University on Saturday November 22nd. We led virtually from start to finish in this game. Our largest lead in the first half was 9 points and we extended the lead to 13 points before winning by 10. We followed the Furman game with a hard fought battle against Holy Cross the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. This game was a seesaw battle that saw the FRIARS go up by as many as 9 points in the first half. The 6-point margin of victory for Holy Cross was their largest lead of the game. Both these games were in Alumni Hall and we thank all of you who attended one or both of those games. The players are much more energized when they take the floor with FRIAR fans in the stands!
The Wednesday morning after our Holy Cross game we boarded a 6:00am flight to Los Angeles and spent Thanksgiving in LA. We arrived in LA at 10:30am, ate breakfast at a local hang out, checked into our hotel, rested for a few "minutes" then hit the road for a tour of the area. We took in Rodeo Drive, Hollywood Boulevard, saw the Brentwood area, went to Venice Beach, saw the well known Hollywood sign, etc. We slept in on Thanksgiving morning and ate our Thanksgiving meal together as a team at noon. We had some parents who made the trip out to LA and they joined us as well.
At 6:00pm on Thanksgiving we turned our thoughts and attention back to basketball and practiced at Loyola Marymount for 2 hours. We played the host team (Loyola Marymount) the first round of the tournament on Friday and got down by as much as 21 points with 13 minutes to play. We battled back and cut the score to 8 points with 3:45 left in the game, but ran out of time. The next day we played Oregon State in the second round. With 4:37 to go in the game we were down 1 and ended up losing by 10. Both of the games we played out in LA will do a lot to prepare us for Big East play. As a coaching staff, we are pleased with "segments" of our play. We need to extend the periods of time that we execute well in games -- about 20 minutes right now - to a consistent 35-40 minutes! Again, we are extremely pleased with the effort we are getting from the FRIARS.
After the Oregon State game, we returned to the hotel to check out, we ate dinner at a nice restaurant in Marina del Rey then headed to the Los Angeles airport to take a red eye home to Providence! We departed LA on a 10:55pm flight and arrived in Providence at 9:15am. We took Sunday off, will attend classes on Monday and then get on a bus at 2:00pm to head to Hanover, NH for our game with Dartmouth on Tuesday, December 2nd. We bus back to Providence immediately after our 7:00pm game on Tuesday and the players will be in classes on Wednesday morning! It is not an easy travel schedule and the players will need to be disciplined and committed to their studies, their rest and their nutrition. You can rest assured that they are hearing the "preaching" on all three topics from the staff!
We have 3 December home games in Alumni Hall
Come & Catch the FRIARS in action on:
December 5 vs. Rhode Island @7:30pm
December 8 vs. Northeastern @7:30pm
December 22 vs. Harvard @7:30pm
