First NSIC Road Trip for WSU

Hi everyone, coach Brady Moore, reporting in on our current road trip. Well so far the trip has been cold to say the least. Don't know what the temp. fell to last night but it was not above zero that is for sure and I can say this because I had to run across the street to the local Walmart to buy bathroom supplies as I forgot my bathroom kit at home. Nothing new for me, I always forget something when we travel, it is almost like I subconsciously do this as a good luck charm for our team. But usually it is not a huge item like this, more like socks, belt, little things.

Anyway we spent about 6 hours on the road yesterday getting up here. Watched a couple of movies in "The Bucket List" and "Hancock". Personally I would recommend "The Bucket List" to anyone and if you like Will Smith "Hancock" is okay but not a great movie in my eyes. Once up here we headed right over to the gym for practice. We had a good practice, which can be hard when you get right off a bus but I think you can tell our guys have good focus right now. Also it was a physical practice that we don't always see the day before the game as Joel Armstrong had to take a trip to the emergency room to get his face glued after taking a elbow. Nothing serious, Joel said it was the first time he had his face super glued which was pretty funny.

Right now we are going through our daily pre-game on the road routine. We just had breakfast, now getting ready for shoot-around over at the gym again. Then we will head back for a couple hours to relax, go to Subway for pre-game then back to the hotel until 6 when we leave to go and watch the women's team play.

As for tonight's game, it should be a good one. Bemdiji's record is does not show how good of a team they are. After watching their games against Northern St. and Moorhead I must say they should have won both of them and it could have been easily. They had both teams on the ropes but just couldn't get that one big bucket to really put the game out of reach and then both teams went on runs right at the end of the game to come away with a close victory. Tonight we expect to see a ton of motion offense, which they run very well. A couple of their main threats are guards, Seth Haake and Brady Fairbanks. Both can really shoot it and it they get going from the outside they are really tough to stop. Inside they have some nice big men that do a great job of setting screens and then flashing to the bucket for easy scores. On top of that they have one of the better freshman in the league in Bryce Tesdahl. Tesdahl can do a bit of everything as he scores from the inside and outside, he can take you off the dribble and he is a great passer. He just makes everyone around him better, which is something any coach wants in his players.

I think keys for us tonight will once again be rebounding the baskeball. If we can hold them to one shot and we can get ourselves multiple looks at the basket during our possessions we should be okay. We also will need to not let them go where they want offensively, they are very pateint and we will need to be pateint on defense allowing them to make the mistakes on their own. Offensively I think we can get good looks at anytime as long as we are pateint as well. Hopefully we can get our shooter going right away from the outside making them have to extend their defense out past the 3 point line some. This should then open up the middle for driving lanes and for our posts inside. A key for us will be our spacing, when we are spaced correctly we can do some nice things, when we are not we stand and struggle to score.

If you want to learn more about Bemidji, copy and paste this link to their website: http://www.bemidjistate.edu/athletics/sports/mhoops/index.html


That's all I have for now. Go Warriors!!