And We're Back

After a ten day layoff (too long in my opinion but not much we can do about it) we headed back to practice on the night of the 26th. I wasn't able to make it until the last few minutes because of flight issues.

As most of you know the east coast got hit with a barrage of snow at the beginning of the week. This was after seeing GREEN grass at my parents' house when I got home on the 22nd. Green grass in December, absolutely unheard of. It snowed on Christmas day a little bit to cover the green and made Christmas "white." My time at home was great. I got to see my mom's dad aka "Big Grandpa" right after I landed up in Rochester. It was nice to see him, he's definitely moving a little slower but as always is still pretty sharp. Over the next couple of days I got to see a lot of family, friends (only 3 left back home), and had some real NY style pizza. Lots of fun.

On the way back to Rochester we heard on the radio that 270 Continental flights to and from Newark had been canceled. My flight was headed to Newark. Surprise, surprise. I have some family members that work in the airline industry and they told me to get to the airport as quickly as possible to see what I could do to get back to the Twin Cities. All Continental flights were on hold until Monday and it looked like I would be headed to Cleveland Monday before going to Minneapolis. I wasn't happy about it but there is nothing I could do at that point. The guy at the counter ask me again where I was headed and I said MSP and he looked up a couple of other airlines to see what he could do and Voila (I know I spelled it wrong) I got to head to MSP at 7pm on a direct Delta flight. On top of getting a flight out on Sunday I was also able to get to spend time with five of my aunts and uncles (three more weren't there, my mom has 8 brothers and sisters) before leaving.

I got back to school right when practice was over and we headed to the weight room to get the guys to look like me. Rome certainly wasn't built in a day. It's really important that our guys get after it in the weight room, they need to get stronger because we need to get to loose balls and be able to finish around the basket.

We had double sessions yesterday and overall it went well. A couple of guys weren't feeling to well because I think they overate for lunch and dinner. It happens, I would rather have them overeat then not eat enough. We had doubles again today and that went ok. We are still making some of the same mistakes over and over and the learning curve of each guy has to be better. We also had a little chippiness (if that's a word) today. A couple of guys were going at it in a rebounding drill and neither was backing down. There was a big shove and some verbal sparring but nothing too much. I didn't stop it at all and I actually enjoyed seeing it. I haven't seen that at all in the past three years. Competitive people going after each other, that's how practice is supposed to be. Guys fighting for spots and fighting for minutes, no harm at all.

We leave tomorrow to head to UW-Whitewater for a game on the 30th. It should be another good one. They are a good team but I think we should right there. Hopefully, Carl will play his usual 30 minutes a game that he has during all non-conference games. You can find all the info for Live Stats/Radio/etc for the Whitewater game HERE.