February 15, 2006
Hello again. Our team has been really busy since I made my last entry.
I want to start off by mentioning that our team is continuing to open eyes of many people. It's been a long time since women's basketball has been the center of attention in Aggieland. Teams are now being forced to take us more serious as a basketball team. I don't know about you, but that sounds like respect to me.
In the past two weeks, we've won some pretty impressive games. Our game against Texas Tech was one for the school record book. It had been a long time since A&M had beat the Lady Raiders. We dominated the game with our intensity on defense and our aggressiveness on offense. Plus, the energy our fans contributed in Reed Arena was off the charts. Their energy kept us going like Energizer bunnies!
Next we took on Texas on the road. In my opinion, that was our best win yet. I thought the Texas A&M spirit dominated the Longhorn house on that night. The Aggies were not going to the Erwin Center to settle for second place. I think the combination of our matchups and our desire to claim that big State Farm Lone Star Showdown trophy was important to our winning the game.
During the game, I can remember glancing over at our bench area and seeing our fans that came to Austin to support us. The looks in their eyes showed an excitement I had not seen from our fans before.
Last Saturday, we won at Nebraska. Let me just say that those were the two coldest days I have ever endured in my life.
Anyway, we did not have much time to prepare for the Huskers since we were going to be playing three games in seven days and the NCAA makes us take a day off. We worked hard in our gameday shoot around and remained focused on things that needed to be executed in the game. I think we shot really well against their zone defense early in the game. It surprised me when they went to a man to man defense. Beside all the turnovers we made, I thought we played a great game.
Right now I want to take a time out to let our coaches know how much our team loves them and appreciates them. We have some of the most dedicated coaches in all of college basketball. It's amazing how passionate each one of them are about this team and winning.
For those that may not know, our coaches spend a lot of time watching game tapes and preparing us for each team we are going to face. In my opinion, the assistant coach of the year should be Vic Schaefer. He is the heart and sole of our defense. I want to give a shout-out to Coach Schaefer. Someday you'll get the defensive coach of the year award because you really deserve it.
Back to hoops. To my knowledge we moved up in the polls this week from No. 24 to No. 21.
Coach always tells us, "One day you could be in the top 25 and they next day you could be gone."
To me that means we can't be satisfied with just being in the top 25 and think we are going to stay there without hard work. As a team, we need to act like a top 25 team and prove that we belong in the rankings.
Even though everything seems to be going well for us right now, we have to stay hungry for success. There is plenty to come along on this new road we paved for our program this season. But if it's one thing that's guaranteed, we have very supportive fans traveling with us on this journey.
Until next time, thanks for reading T-Kay's Point.
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