South Carolina Blog
12/15/2008 10:04:40 PM | Men's Basketball
Follow the men's basketball team to Clemson and Furman
Another extended road trip and you know what that means, it's time to bring the blog back. This week I will be blogging, aka writing random thoughts, from
As always feel free to e-mail me at slafata@unf.edu if you have a question or comment!
Thursday
We woke up today with some crazy light shining in our window. It was this big bright object in the sky. In
As promised, here is a link to the ESPN.com article on the Ospreys. Click here:
The guys are filling it up in shoot-around this morning. We all hope that carries over to this evening.
We are about 45 minutes away from tipoff. The team is stretching right now and Mike Ridught and I are preparing for the broadcast. Well, Mike is preparing, or at least shuffling through papers. I am sending text messages to my sister who is talking trash about how she is going to beat up on me at Wii bowling when I come down there for Christmas. I guess it's only fair I used to beat up on her as a kid. Hope my mom doesn't read this! Speaking of the family, I want to wish my dad a Happy Birthday!
The day went by pretty well. There was a massive chess tournament between the guys that carried over from last night in the hotel lobby. Not sure who is the ultimate champ, but Ashton Jones looks like he is pretty good.
We had a nice ride over. The sun was setting and trying to break through the clouds. The Furman campus is very scenic. Lots of trees and columns on the front of the buildings. Mike said it looks like the set of a Harry Potter movie.
The bus rides over to games are some of my favorite parts of traveling with the team. There is a different attitude when it comes to game time. You feel the focus and a little bit of tension because you know you are headed to the game. The bus is normally real quiet. Some people are listening to head phones, but overall it is quiet. Almost eerie, but soothing as well. It's like a big cat stalking its prey, moving in silently, aware of its surrounding but totally focused on its prey at the same time. Then when its time to pounce the adrenaline kicks into gear and the game is on.
It's almost time for us to pounce tonight. Go Ospreys!
Wednesday
Day three has been pretty calm thus far. We all got up, ate breakfast then headed out to Greeneville, where the team will conclude its
After a little lunch I tortured Mike Ridaught for a while when I turned on ESPN Classic and made him watch the Capital One Bowl from Jan. 1, 2008, when
The Ospreys have received some good media coverage here thus far. Germaine Sparkes' picture was in USA Today alongside the story from the Clemson game. ESPN.com has been here covering the team as well. Look for a feature story on the team soon. I will post it on UNFOspreys.com when the story comes out.
Cameron Lovelace, aka, Chuckles found himself in a little hot water last night with coach Kilcullen after his behind the back pass and smile at the end of the Clemson game.
The team has been wearing gloves in practice the last couple of days. It's not because they are cold but if they can handle a basketball with the gloves they are wearing, it will make it that much easier when they take the gloves off. Either that or they are going to do some gardening after practice. I'm not sure.
I wish I could report some more exciting stuff going on, but not a whole lot is happening on this trip. I think I am getting an ear ache if anyone wants to send sympathy cards. I guess that's what I get for running in the drizzly weather. Should have listened to my mom when I was a kid. I should know better than to play in the rain.
I asked coach Kilcullen about some of his favorite venues that he has been to. He said UCLA was one of his favorite places when he was at Notre Dame because of the rivalry those teams had, as well as Duke. He had a great story about the crazy fans at
Tuesday
I have always wondered where all those news cameras go to follow the candidates during presidential elections. I just found out this morning when we walked into a place called Paws Diner. This was the definition of your small town diner. A bunch of old guys sitting around drinking their morning cup of coffee. Lots of flannel and trucker hats (the kind the college kids don't wear).
Some old guy even talked a little trash to the team about how the Ospreys are going to be in trouble against the undefeated Clemson Tigers. Then he tried to lift the team spirits by letting them know “it wasn't the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog.”
Thanks for the words of wisdom! He probably invented that phrase.
I have learned a few things at today's shootaround. Jason Bastian is a much better basketball player than Josh Baker, so if the managers squared off one-on-one it would be no contest. I have also learned that coach Kilcullen can still operate a scoreboard console. That could come in handy later tonight if this is a close contest. Not that he would add any extra points to our score. Finally I have learned that there are at least 400,000 Tiger paws at LittleJohn Arena. Mike Ridaught stayed here last night and counted them all. Not really, we just put our UNF educations together and did a little bit of math.
For those who don't know, tonight's matchup between Clemson and UNF was a contest between the No. 1 team in the RPI rankings and the No. 343 team. That marks the largest gap ever between teams in the RPI. In the early going, it looked like there was virtually no difference between the two teams. Kyle Groothuis played really well and the Ospreys gave Clemson a good run for their money. In the end Clemson showed why they were an ACC team that has ACC athletes. But what a great effort early on by the Ospreys.
Now it's off to Furman, which is about 45 minutes down the road. Before that I am going to go back to watching this animal attacking humans show that is on TV. You know if you are going to stick your head in the mouth of an alligator you deserve to have it bite you!
Monday
I think today is Monday, I'm not really sure. Usually we don't travel on Mondays but I'm OK with being out of the office today. Mondays are usually pretty hectic, so six hours of bus ride is an alright trade.
The trip up was pretty uneventful. We watched three pretty good movies on the way up: “Rush Hour 3,” and a couple of Martin Lawrence movies.
The team just went through a pretty intense practice. This was one of the most intense practices I have seen them go through. I think the guys are excited to be back on the court after a week of final exams. I'm excited to see a healthy body out there as well in the form of Devon Jones. He should get some quality minutes tomorrow night.
We haven't gotten a look at Clemson's Little john Arena yet, only a look at the Little Little John Arena, also known as the auxiliary practice facility.
I would love to tell you more about the campus here, but the whole state was covered in fog today. I can tell you, however, the greens at the university golf course appear to be in excellent shape, but the fairways are full of dead grass. The fun thing about that is you can get some good spin off that grass with your wedges. As a side note, if anyone has any pull with Santa Clause I would like a new Hybrid and a Taylormade 3-wood for Christmas.
Jimmy “The Flash” Link is running the court right now, Mark Power is riding the bike and coaches Crumbley and Davis are doing pushups. Looks like everyone is getting started on that New Year's resolution early.
We almost didn't have a blog this week when a basketball came flying toward the computer. Luckily the water that was spilled did not get the machine. Although we might owe Clemson a new scoreboard console. The laptops are valuable commodities in our world. In fact I tell my student assistants who work home games that their first job is to save our computers. We can always get new student assistants, but these computers are expensive!
Quote of the day from coach Matt Kilcullen: “When I played I couldn't jump over a credit card.”
Time to wrap this up for the night. Mike Ridaught just mentioned to all the guys that the Miss Hooters competition was on TV. They all went scrambling for the remotes so I'm sure they will be entertained for the rest of the evening.
