[BasketballAlum] Recent games

[gary holquist]

Bulldog Basketball Alumni and Friends:

The Winona State University game proved to be a contest that was played 
at a level of intensity and aggressiveness indicative of a March 
tournament game.  The atmosphere and crowd in Romano Gymnasium was fun 
to see in early December.  There are many reasons WSU is the number 1 
team in the country and have a 30 game win streak.  WSU refused to lose 
and played an excellent game against us.  We lost 84 to 74, gave 
ourselves chances, but did not make enough key plays at the times 
needed to enable us a win.  WSU is a team that scores in bunches and at 
times we lost control of the tempo of the game.  I thought we did a 
good job of controlling tempo overall; by making them play against our 
set defense via conversion, having them defend us deeper in the shot 
clock offensively, getting good lane touches and scores, having great 
shot selection ourselves, limiting their second chance opportunities on 
the offensive glass, and dealing with their full court pressure 
effectively so we did not speed up our own play.  When we faltered, it 
mainly was because we fell into the trap of making mental mistakes 
against their pressure.  I thought during these stretches we shot too 
quickly, missed easy scoring opportunities ourselves, and allowed them 
to score without having to earn a tough basket.  Though we only turned 
it over 13 times-5 in the second half, the turnovers came at 
inopportune times that gave them easy scores.  To beat a great team you 
can never beat yourself and WSU took advantage of our few lapses, than 
capitalized on those mental mistakes.  We battled back and continued to 
give ourselves opportunities down the stretch having the ball and the 
lead cut down to six twice in the last minutes, but never made a play 
to narrow the margin.  Winona made free throws at the end to seal the 
victory.  We did play hard and competed at a level needed to win a game 
like this, but we also needed to execute consistently at a high level. 
We had two poorly executed stretches that WSU capitalized on that were 
tough to overcome.  They came at the end of the first half when we lost 
our lead and half way through the second half.  I hope that we will get 
another opportunity to play WSU in the regional tournament next March.

UMD and WSU have a great history of basketball between the two schools. 
WSU Coach Mike Leaf told the Duluth News Tribune after the game: "Any 
time we played Duluth, going back to their days in the Northern Sun 
Intercollegiate Conference, they've always been a very physical, 
talented team, so we knew this was going to be a barnburner from the 
get-go.  I didn't see any reason why this one wouldn't be.  Duluth has 
such a presence inside, and we knew that was going to be trouble for 
us.  It was a battle."  It was a battle and great game to have early in 
December.  I hope we get to battle them again.

A key match up of the game was two junior centers, John Vaudreuil 6-8, 
260 of UMD and John Smith 6-8, 250 of WSU.  There was good basketball 
played between these two guys as Vaudreuil had 25 points-9 
rebounds/Smith had 19 ponits-7 rebounds.  Vaudreuil was selected as the 
"Player of the Week" in the North Central Conference today because of 
his play over the last week in which he averaged 22 points-6 rebounds 
during our lost to WSU and victories over Minnesota State University 
Moorhead and University Minnesota Crookston.  (Saturday night we played 
UMC and won 95-71 in a contest in which we had a significant lead 
throughout.  Bryan Foss played well having 28 points-13 rebounds, 
grabbing his third double-double of the season.)

Final exams started this weekend and will conclude on Thursday.  After 
our last final is taken at 2:00pm on Thursday, we will hop on the bus 
and head to Houghton, Michigan where we play MTU on Friday night. 
Though we beat MTU by four at home over Thanksgiving they have been 
very successful over the last few weeks defeating Northern Michigan, 
Northwood University, and Saginaw Valley State University.  This game 
always proves to be a tough one for us.  We built our schedule around 
the fact that we wanted the next three non-conference games to test us 
physically and mentally on the road to prepare us for the rigors of NCC 
play, which starts at Minnesota State Mankato on January 4th.  We will 
give the team off after the Tech game until December 27th, practice 
three times and head to Concordia University St. Paul (8-1)on the 29th 
and Southwest Minnesota State University (7-3) on the 30th.  Three 
tough road games to prepare us for the NCC.  The 'Dogs have won three 
of our last four and have a record of 8 wins-4 losses.  I like the 
direction we are heading-improvement each time out.

I'll contact you again after the New Year.  Between the road games and 
recruiting over the next few weeks, I do not expect to be in the office 
much.  Have an enjoyable holiday.  Keep Bulldog Basketball in the back 
of your minds-we hope to see you all at games again when conference 
play starts.

Go Bulldogs!

Gary W. Holquist
University of Minnesota Duluth
Head Men's Basketball Coach
218-726-6185