12/07/07 - Another Great Start
for Tiger Basketball …

Hello Tiger Fans, another great November and start of December for Tiger Basketball!  We are coming off some big wins in beating Purdue, South Carolina, and East Carolina for our 6th ,7th , and 8th  victories of the year.  We are trying to build a resume for the postseason each and every night we take the floor.  Whenever you beat teams from the power conferences and win on the road it puts a positive mark at the top of the resume for down the line in March.

We had to start last week before the Purdue game without James Mays and Sam Perry because of injuries.  Without these two crucial parts of our team everyone in the program had to pull their belt a little tighter and work a little harder including players, coaches, trainers, and even managers!  Good teams find a way to overcome some adversity during the season and believe me everyone goes through it one time or another.  This will not be the last of it for us. 

If you did not make it to these last two games at home you missed a great atmosphere on both nights.  Our students were great!  They were into the game from warm-ups to the final buzzer and this type of energy makes Littlejohn Coliseum a tough place to win for an opposing team.  I sent an email out early this past week to let them know what a great job they did for the ACC/BIG 10 Challenge and then repeated that effort versus South Carolina.   

South Carolina came in here a very motivated team in a situation where they had dropped three straight to us and lost some close ball games the week before in Orlando.  My message to our team was that we had to match or exceed that intensity for us to be successful and it started in practice.  We came through with a very emotional energetic start that did just that.  South Carolina made a few runs but we withstood them and made some great plays on both ends of the floor to win the game.

Now we move into the most important segment of the season, EXAMS!  During exam time we will shorten practices and give some days off but still try to stay sharp and get our conditioning in while not playing games.  This time off also gives our staff some days where we can get out on the road recruiting and make a few of these holiday tournaments around the country.  Hopefully, after this fifteen-day break we can go into the San Juan Shootout with our entire team back healthy and ready to go!  I hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday season and spends some much-needed time with family and friends! 

Go Tigers!

-- Coach P