[BasketballAlum] Newsletter 11/29

[James Kuronen]

Greetings-
Your Bulldogs are 2-2 after the American Family Insurance Classic this 
past week-end. On Friday night we defeated Michigan Tech for the first 
time since Coach Holquist took over as Head Coach 8 years ago. We had 
found a way to lose in almost every different way during that time 
including getting blown out, getting beat at the buzzer, losing leads, 
etc. Friday night we put together our best defensive effort in my 
recent memory. We were able to stay in position and not give them any 
open looks for 40 minutes. Tech ended up shooting 38% for the game and 
only scored 47 points. We had a balanced offensive night with 4 players 
in double figures Sean Seaman (Sr.-Duluth,MN) with 13, John Emerson 
(Sr.-New Richmond, WI) with 12, and John Vaudreuil (So.-Bloomington, 
MN) and Jordan Nuness (So.-Eden Prairie, MN) each had 10.
We got some offense out of you 5 spot with Vaudreuil and Matt Rawley 
(Jr.-Milwaukee,WI) going 7-12 from the field after struggling in our 
first 2 games.

Saturday night we lost for the second time to Winona State, this time 
by a score of 76-72. Winona has a very good team and is going to win a 
lot of games this year, but we can't keep hoping we are able to meet 
them should we earn our way into the NCAA Regional Tournament. Sean 
Seaman led us in scoring Saturday with 24 points on 9-16 shooting and 
also had 8 rebounds for a team high. We spotted Winona a 13 point lead 
in the second half and fought back to cut it two points with under a 
minute left but couldn't get a key stop when we needed it. Our 5 men 
again had better efforts scoring-wise as Vaudreuil and Rawley went a 
combined 7-13.

After watching some of our future opponents from last year's games, 
I've been telling Coach Holquist we are a different team on the 
defensive end. Our players have really bought in to playing defense and 
staying mentally focused on that end of the floor. We are preaching 
vision and communication and they are doing a great job. We don't have 
the most athletic team so we think the better and longer we can stay in 
position on defense to more we can achieve our goal of making the other 
team take as low a percentage shot as possible. Through the first 4 
games, which have all been against quality opponents, we are shooting 
47% and limiting our opponents to 42%. If we can improve our scoring in 
the post it'll raise our shooting percentage and get an even wider 
margin in those two stats.

Tonight we take on the College of St. Scholastica at 7:00pm. Thursday 
Northland College comes to Romano Gym, then we leave Duluth Friday for 
a Saturday night game at MSU-Moorhead. What I thought would be 3 wins 
this week will be more difficult. MSU-Moorhead is currently 6-1 after 
beating a good Northern Michigan team last week-end. They have added 3 
players from Texas who've dramatically changed their team from a year 
ago.

75th YEAR TEAM VOTES:
The votes are coming in very steady for out all 75th Year team of UMD 
Basketball. If you haven't done so please send in your ballot ASAP. We 
need to get the information to Josten's for them to produce the 
momentos each member of the team will receive. Josten's is also 
producing a permanent momento which will be placed in our locker room 
for future teams to see.

Butch Kuronen
Assistant Basketball Coach
University of Minnesota Duluth
218-726-6199 (office)
218-591-7618 (cell)
jkuronen at d.umn.edu