University of Richmond Athletics
A Players' Perspective
01/27/2004 | Women's Basketball
Jan. 27, 2004
Editor's Note...The Spiders' women's basketball team enjoyed a record-breaking 21-11 season in 2002-03, which included two wins in the NIT - the first postseason victories in the program's history. Sophomore guard Araceli Gil was an intregal part of the team's success - earning Atlantic 10 All-Rookie team honors. She was one of three Spiders to play in every game, and capped her freshman season with a career-high-tying 17 points in an NIT victory over Georgetown.
How do the Spiders prepare to build upon last year's success? Araceli's weekly diary will provide some answers as she takes us to the weight room, the track, the dining hall, the campus, and finally - the court - with several other stops along the way. |
Week 13...
We had a tough weekend in Philly, from which we are all still trying to recover. An overtime loss to Temple and a close loss to LaSalle were the downfalls of our weekend. Fortunately the men's' basketball team had two huge wins that are currently the talk of the entire campus.
We arrived in Philly on Thursday night when the men played at Kansas University on national television. We chose to order pizzas and watch the game rather than go out to dinner. Kate was my roommate on this trip, and Saona and Jamel came into our room to eat and watch the game together. Prior to the game, we discussed how exciting it would be if the men caused an upset at Kansas. When the game came on T.V., we yelled every time there was a good play, a bad call, laughed out of control when two players knocked down one of the refs. We were loud, and were reminded of that when one of the hotel security guards knocked on our door and asked us to please be quieter. We apologized and concluded that the only way to get quieter was to be separated. So Saona and Jamel went back to their room for the second half and sprinted back to our room after Mr. Tony Dobbins hit the game-winning jumper. We were jumping all over the place and expressed how happy we were for the men's team. Then Kate and I proceeded to call the cell phone's of a few of the men's players and left messages telling them how "awesome" and "amazing" they were. Immediately after the game we tried to calm ourselves down, and watched a few ESPN highlight's on the game before going to bed to rest up for the Temple game.
Unfortunately we were not as excited after our game as we were after the men's Kansas game, in fact, we were highly disappointed that we couldn't pull out a win against Temple. We built up a good 10-point lead early on, and extended it to as much as 14 in the first half, but in the end, we made some mistakes and poor defensive decisions to lose the game in overtime.
We had to let the Temple game go and prepared for LaSalle, a team that destroyed us on their home court last year, and a team who we beat pretty easily on our home court just a couple of weeks ago. We knew they would be ready for revenge, and sure enough they showed that on the court. They came out and attacked us offensively from tip off, and they played like that for the entire game. They had a consistent double digit lead for most of the game. It wasn't until there were about six minutes left in the game that we started chipping at their lead. We actually took a one-point lead in the last minute, but again, poor decisions throughout the entire game and especially in the last minute prevented us from coming out with a win.
At this point all we can do is learn from the two games we lost this weekend, but we realize that as a team we are really going to have to make a commitment to not let these type of mistakes cost us any more games. If we can do that for the rest of the season, then we can go ahead and maybe even suggest that these two games were a blessing in disguise. However, if we let these two games become a part of our identity, then I can guarantee we're in for a rough rest of the season. Our team's tough, and together we'll be able to overcome this bump in the road.
Meanwhile I'm going to use this "snow day Monday" to get away from basketball for just a bit, and catch up on all the work that I missed while I was gone, and let's be honest, I need to do all the work that I should have done this weekend too.
