[BasketballAlum] 2/7 Newsletter

[James Kuronen]

A GREAT week for UMD Basketball. Beyond the fact that we won 2 games 
during the week was the Alumni Day and celebration of the All 75th Year 
Team at half-time on Saturday. In addition to 14 members of the team 
that were in attendance to receive their rings there were about 40 
other alums present at the game and social that followed. Twenty former 
Bulldogs played a fun game Saturday morning which was declared a 
success because 1) no one got hurt and 2) everyone had a great time. 
Attached are 2 pictures one of the half-time presentation and one of 
the teams from the morning game.

Wednesday 2/1 we defeated Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD for the 
second time. Back on Jan 12 we beat them in Romano Gym by 20. This time 
in Sioux Falls we won 75-67. John Vaudreuil (So-Bloomington Jefferson) 
had a very strong performance going 7-8 from the field and scoring 17 
points and at the same time teamed with Matt Rawley (Jr.-Milwaukee 
Lutheran) to hold Augustana's leading scorer to 6 points. Bryan Foss 
(Jr.-Osseo, MN) stepped up his game to where it had been in December 
and scored 8 points but brought down 9 rebounds. It has become apparent 
Bryan is one of the big keys to our team. He is a complementary player 
who we ask to screen a lot to get teammates open, defend, and rebound. 
He is becoming very adept at recognizing when the other team is leaving 
him to help on someone else and has developed a knack for finding open 
areas. Ryan Breidenbach (Jr.-Oregon, WI) started to show signs of his 
strengths again after missing 3 games due to academic difficulties. 
Ryan is our best athlete and most explosive player.

Saturday with a full house in Romano Gym we handled the Univ. of South 
Dakota 70-65. We never were behind in 40 minutes of play. When leading 
at half-time
our record is 11-2. We took a 9 point lead to the locker room Saturday 
and built it to as high as 16. USD made a couple of runs and cut it to 
2 pts. on 2 different occasions but we answered each time. We had 5 
players in double digits scoring; Foss with 18, Vaudreuil with 14, and 
Matt Rawley, Jordan Nuness (So-Eden Prairie, MN) and John Emerson 
(Sr.-New Richmond, WI) each had 10. We out rebounded USD by 10 which 
included 11 offensive rebounds for us.

We played the USD game without Senior Sean Seaman who was injured late 
in the game vs. Augustana. He finished the game but when we returned to 
Duluth at 4:30 am he was brought to the emergency room where he 
subsequently needed surgery. He can return to classes this Thursday and 
see's the surgeon Monday 2/13 to hopefully get cleared to return to 
practice.

We have 4 regular season games remaining, but oddly they are against 
only 2 teams. We are done with everyone in the NCC except North Dakota 
and Neb-Omaha. We play those two schools twice each in the next 3 
weeks. All 4 games we are capably of winning. Winning those games rests 
squarely on our shoulders. If we play like we did last week we'll win. 
If our effort is as it was 2 weeks ago the games will be in doubt.

Thanks to all those alums who traveled back to Duluth this past week 
end. It was a great memory filled time for all of us, again 
congratulations to the 15 recipients of the All 75th Year Team honor.

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