Although pre-conference tune-ups against LSU and Loyola-Chicago in the Windy City were challenging in their own right for the women’s and men’s basketball teams, conference play is a whole new ball game.
It presents coach Michael Giorlando’s men (3-9, 0-2 GCAC) and DoBee Plaisance’s women (7-7, 1-1 GCAC) with unique challenges – hostile environments on the road; little time for players to finish their coursework; re-establishing momentum after a Christmas layoff and opponents focused exclusively on nullifying the Wolfpack’s strongest aspects of play into non-factors.
“Anyone playing college ball got there because they are competitive enough for every game to mean something. Conference is where it really means something,” said forward David Curtin, history junior. “We’re trying to get to nationals and not leave it up for grabs for anyone to vote on in the polls at the end of the season. We want to win conference outright.”
It’s been a difficult start for the men, however, after a 70-62 loss to William Carey on Jan. 6 and a 69-64 loss to Southern University-New Orleans Jan. 4.
The Wolfpack women, led by psychology sophomore guard Trenell Smith’s 17-point GCAC average and forward and criminal justice graduate Dani Holland’s 6.3 rebounds a game, justify similar sentiments – heading into the Christmas break, their play merited a No. 28 ranking overall in the NAIA thanks to 36 votes in the national polls, the most ever in school history, before settling at No. 37 once conference started.
They faltered in a 55-51 loss to SUNO in their conference opener Jan. 4 but recovered with a 69-55 rout against William Carey at The Den on Jan. 6.
“It’s a whole new season where the slate is clean. But the ante’s bigger, and it’s what gets you to where you need to be for the post-season,” Plaisance said.
HOSTILE ENVIRONMENTS
His third year playing for the ‘Pack, Curtin has become well acquainted with the tougher venues of the GCAC and what playing there implies.
“The Dock” at LSU-Shreveport is a notoriously tough environment to play in – it’s a 5-hour bus ride from the oaks of Uptown New Orleans, so it’s a challenge to muster even modest maroon and gold support.
“Their stands are full and always rocking. They are traditionally a good team, so the students and the school get really behind them,” Curtin said of the No. 6 team in the NAIA. “No one ever really gives us a chance against them, so it’s nice to take it to them.”
On top of the deafening crowd, ‘Pack defenders have to try to contain Freddy Hughes’ 31.6 points a game and Kyile Byrd’s 29.6, without mentioning Josh Porter’s average of 25.9.
Porter, however, sustained fractured vertebrae in a mid-court collision in an exhibition against Southwestern Assemblies of God University during the Nov. 28 match up and faced grim possibilities of being permanently paralyzed from the neck down.
Porter is expected to fully recover after a successful surgery. He may even return to face Loyola Jan. 25 and Feb. 12.
“The dude’s incredible. He shoots five feet behind the three-point line and can jump out of the gym,” Curtin assessed.
At Spring Hill’s Outlaw Center, the notoriously tough Mobile, Ala., venue that is home to Loyola’s fiercest conference rival, Curtin has become accustomed to abrasive heckling.
When sizing up the goal for a free throw shot or simply defending, Curtin customarily absorbs lewd insults involving fornication with mothers, sisters, girlfriends and grandmothers.
As an option off the bench, Curtin might not enter the rotation one night but play as many as 25 minutes the next.
“So if you’re on the bench, you’re an obvious target. They are like, ‘Hey, No. 15, why aren’t you in the game? ‘Cause you suck?’ And then when you do go in, they step it up.
“They are ridiculous. There is no restraint,” he said, adding that a road loss in Mobile is an especially bitter ordeal with an emphatic nod.
“Road wins are so important. It’s tough going into situations like those and getting positive results. To do that is a step in the process of becoming an elite team, and if you can win on the road, presumably you can win at home.”
STRAINS OF STUDYING
Women’s leading scorer Trenese Smith’s road schedule reads something like this: Embark on one-way bus trips as long as five hours. Unload, check into the hotel and unwind. Get to the gym for a shootaround. Eat Subway. Review film on the opponent. Be in bed by 10 p.m.
Wake up. Go through a walkthrough of the game plan. Execute the game plan. Embark on the return bus trip, with teammates still harboring energy from the floor, causing a ruckus in the seats via entertaining anecdotes, laughing at the movie playing on one of the monitors overlooking the bus coach.
Somewhere in there, win or lose, she’s to churn out a paper or read a book for her business class.
“You do what you got to do,” Smith said. “You do stuff on the bus (regardless of the distractions), because you have to get your work done.”
For a legendary procrastinator like Curtin, who makes the least of his time on campus and composes 10-page research papers for his history major on the bus and waits until deadline to cram a book, the sentiments differ – especially after a conference loss.
“It’s hard to get your mind back to the level where you can read anything and retain it. In your mind, you’re going over every single thing where you could have won the game or lost it,” he said.
It’s not, Curtin admits, concentrated on decoding text on dead presidents and the effect their administrations had on foreign affairs.
Not when his reading is partly lighted by the bluish haze of a Will Ferrell movie, not when yellow highway markers zoom by the window he’s resting his head on, not when his teammates are coercing him into wrestling matches over the armrests.
UNIQUE COACHING CHALLENGES
In Curtin’s opinion, conference presents the Wolfpack with opponents that are better prepared.
“Their schemes are keyed to take (our strengths) out the game,” he said.
The most notable tendencies opponents attack are psychology junior guard Luke Zumo’s perimeter scoring and finance junior forward Mario Faranda’s post-play through double-teams; they also relentlessly set picks on accounting senior guard James Bunn, the ‘Pack’s top defender charged with handling the opponent’s best attacker.
For Plaisance’s women, however, their toughest challenge was overcoming a Christmas break layoff that was “just long enough to throw (timing) out of sync.”
It instilled enough rust on their gameplan execution against SUNO to inflict a loss, and Plaisance voiced her displeasure.
“It’s my job that we pick up the intensity in practice,” she said, going on to admit that upping it would oil up both timing and execution.
In the William Carey win at The Den, guard and mass communication senior Kiely Schork championed Plaisance’s “sense of urgency.”
“We definitely played with one,” she said.
Brandishing an itchy trigger finger, she buried fourofnine three-pointers and powered the Lady Wolfpack’s balanced scoring with a game-high 14 points.
Ramon Vargas can be reached at [email protected].
Junior forward David Curtin shouts encouragement to his teammates from the bench against Tulane on Nov. 21, 2006. He feels conference play is when the season “really means something.”
