Written By Courtney Waldon

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Big Week Ahead

This past week was a big week for the team. Two wins against those nerds from Evanston, Illinois and the outdated warriors from East Lansing has put the ladies in perfect position in the conference with a matchup against Penn State looming February 3rd. They sit one game behind the Nittany Lions in the B1G standings. That's a good strategy, because you never want to be in front of Penn State. Just when you least expect it, they'll sneak up and come from behind. Of course, I'm strictly speaking of a situation where Purdue is leading the conference with a few games to play and lose it to Penn State. What did you think I was talking about? But first, the team has to get a win against Indiana this Thursday. The Hoosiers aren't the strongest team, so I don't expect a loss in Mackey Arena against them.

Last week was a stellar performance for the RIP Squad in preparation for both Northwestern and Michigan State. We didn't even have to look at the scouting report to know that the Wildcats have the highest team GPA in the country (this may be a completely absurd fact and have no truth in it whatsoever. Yes, we ran the scout team against the girls in practice, but it was our work off the floor that made the difference. I can't necessarily speak for the rest of the guys, but I can tell you I attended every class, took notes like a fiend, and studied. For some reason I feel like we should do this every week. But, when the day is done, the team pulled out a win against Northwestern, which means we did our job.

Michigan State brought a bit more of a challenge. Like I said in my last post, they came in ranked 25th in the country. I also said they wouldn't be ranked this week, and wouldn't you know it, they're not (Nostradamus has nothing on me). It comes to no surprise to everyone that the win came in another overtime game. It was a grind of a game with both teams going back and forth for the majority of the game. Had Sam Ostarello not been sicker than a dog, overtime may not have been necessary. I was really hoping she would play like Michael Jordan did when he was sick (38 points in the playoffs, top that LeBron), but she didn't. These overtimes have become something of a norm for the team. Coach Versyp might as well stop practice five minutes early so the team becomes used to playing five minutes less in games. This would satisfy a number of people, including me.

With yesterday off, we started preparing for the next two games today. I usually like to wear long sleeves under my practice jersey because it keeps me warm when Mackey Arena or the new Cardinal gymnasium is cold during the winter. Today's weather brought in warmer temperatures (around 60) which made the gym warmer than usual. Knowing this would be the case, I made a poor decision to wear the long sleeves. I walked in the gym, took three shots, and I was already sweating like a fat man in a sauna. It was brutal, my body temperature had to be 200 degrees. I head over to the water cooler to try to combat this feeling that I was on fire, and I wish The Waterboy was there to hand me some high quality H2O. I eventually cooled myself down to a respectable temperature, then I hear the coaches call us down to the other side of the floor. Usually we just assist with shooting drills for the first part of practice, so I prepared myself for that (I just stand under the basket). What really happened was quite the contrary.

In high school, when I heard the words "defensive slides", a part of me died. So, to hear those same words to begin practice today nearly killed me. We have never been told to do defensive slides, ever. The only drill we do is zig-zags (dribbling the ball back and forth with a defender on you) against the girls. We only did this for three minutes, but I swear it felt like an eternity. I was worried the coaches were disappointed at our defensive effort in practice (what effort?) but turns out they were just wanting to get us warmed up for the day. I took this as meaning that we were going to be playing a lot of defense. For me, focusing on defense for more than about a 10 minute span is harder than hitting a golf ball with your eyes closed. But, I fight through because I'm a team player.

I'll more than likely be back later this week after the girls pull out a victory against the Hoosiers to talk more about the days leading up to Penn State. If you didn't catch on earlier, it's going to be a big game. Not only could it tie us with the Nittany Lions at the top of the B1G, but it also gives us the tie-breaker over them if we happen to tie at the end of the season because we only play them once. Tune in tomorrow night to watch our men's team play against Dwight Schrute and his band of Loosiers (and that guy with a nose like Pinocchio when he lies).



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