Personal Narrative-Christmas Tournament

Well Rob, first thing's first, are you ready for Christmas?

I haven’t really thought about it, to be honest with you. I’ve been kind of stir crazy with all the time off. I’m just looking forward to having everybody back and getting going again.

Speaking of time off, you gave your team two weeks off. Is that something you normally do and if not, what made you do that this year?

No, we’ve never done that before. Typically, it’s around six or seven days. The reason is the scheduling. We got out of the Modesto Tournament, which typically ends right about now. That dropped down to eight teams and instead, we went to the Santa Barbara Tournament. And then we had finals and we felt it was best to give them that time off and regroup. We will be able to look back and decide whether or not that was a good idea.
We ran an offense that just wasn’t great for the makeup of our team. So that first tournament, it was pretty ugly. A lot of things have happened since then. Our schedule was tough and it took a while for everyone to figure out where they fit with the group and how I coach.

Since losing to South Puget Sound, you have won four of your last five. So what was the difference between the first five games and the last five?

Guys have just become more comfortable and they are more confident in what we are doing. We scrapped our offense. We had two months of offense and scrapped it after two games. We had four days of practice with a new offense and then had to turn around and play four games in seven days. All the little intricacies of the offense, they now have a better understanding of it. We are continuing to improve and our two best players, Lewayne and DeAndre, are playing like our best players.

There is still a chance that you will have a team with only seven guys. Obviously you will compete with whoever you have, but how concerned were when you found out you may only have seven guys heading into the second part of the