Men's basketball tips-off to a rough start
By Erica Granados
IV Leader Sports Editor, Nov. 13, 2003
The men’s basketball team opened this season with a loss against the national Division I champion team, Southeastern Iowa, by a score of 80-56. Top two leading scores were sophomore Terrance Gladney contributing 10 pts. and freshman Doug Safranek who also chipped in 8 pts.
Coach Mike Riley said that the loss was not surprising, but he was pleased with his team’s effort.
“They are such a strong team in every area that it was going to be hard to actually beat them,” Riley said. “But we tried to compete with them and that is what we were trying to find out — what we could do and what we couldn’t do. With our lack of size right now, it just wore us down and we couldn’t match up man to man.”
The biggest strength this season’s team has, according to Riley, is the eight returning sophomores, which gives the team some experience to build upon this season.
Having returning players, however, does not help them with the weakness of the team’s lack of height. Riley believes that the team has spent too much time practicing defense and needs more time on offense.
“We’re struggling on scoring points and that’s kind of unusual to us because all the guys are very athletic and they are good scorers,” he said. “Somehow we’re just not in any kind of sync right now on scoring, so we’re having difficulty really putting points on the board.”
Riley said the team has a really good chance of having fun this year. He believes the team will put up a good challenge in this year’s Arrowhead Conference matchups.
The men are scheduled to play at home against Triton on Nov. 18. Riley said that they are going to have to try very hard against their opponents for this game and will hopefully succeed.
Recently, a new game was added to the men’s schedule. They will be playing against South Wales Australia on Dec. 15. Riley said this would be a good chance to get some new recruits for next year.