SPORTS THE
FRIDAY, JANUARY 12, 2007
MAROON
PAGE 9
ANDY LOPEZ I BELIEVE...
Promise ... I won’t jinx it Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I hope all of you had a nice holiday and enjoyed the company of your family once again. And hopefully you spent time doing what you love to do. For me ... seriously, if you don’t know where this is going, you haven’t read the column before have you? As I type this, I am sitting in my Saints pajama bottoms, wrapped in a Saints blanket with a Saints background on my computer. If you want to go ahead and call me a freak, go for it, but I’m happy. Actually, no. I’m not happy. I’m beyond happy. I’m in a stratosphere completely over the realm of happiness. I have officially left happiness on Earth and am traveling the galaxy looking for other ways of expressing my emotions. Not only are my Saints in the playoffs; not only did my Saints win the NFC South; and not only are my Saints in the divisional round of the playoffs via a first round bye, but this team has a legitimate chance to win the ... Okay. I can’t say it. It’s like a jinx. Like the Madden jinx. (By the way, this is the beginning of my official campaign of asking the good folks at EA Sports to not put any Saint on the cover of Madden ‘08. No Drew Brees. No Reggie Bush. No one.) Every time I hear someone mention the Saints and that game that will be played in Miami on Feb. 4, I hush them because I don’t want them to jinx anything. I mean, I want to take this in for all it’s worth. Analysts across the country are giving the Saints, a 3-13 homeless team a year ago, a legitimate shot at hoisting the Lombardi Trophy. That’s the trophy the team that wins the game played at the end of the season with the funny commercials gets. I don’t want anyone to get upset with me and think that I don’t want them to get there. I just don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to ruin a good thing. In fact, I think if the Saints do get to the game with the “ultra-spectacular” halftime show that once had Justin Timberlake reveal Janet Jackson, then I may just trek out to Miami to see it. Seriously, how awesome would it be for the Saints to play the Chargers, Brees’ old team, or the Colts and hometown hero Peyton Manning in the game that will be played for the 41st time to decide the champion of the league? But for now, all I can do is sit back and relax. I’ll be in the stands for the playoff game. I’ll be watching on TV if they have to travel to Chicago for the NFC Championship. I know it’ll be worth it. I may have to order some food, though. Like a big bag of chips. I may need a big bowl for that, though. Like one of those super bowls or something.
Trenell Smith Torry Beaulieu point guard point guard assists leader (34) assists leader (47)
The Starters
James Bunn shooting guard steals leader (16)
Christine Mainguy Bear Wurts power forward forward 8 pts. per game avgs. 5 rebounds
Kiely Schork shooting guard 3-pt. leader (33)
Trenese Smith Luke Zumo shooting guard shooting guard 15.6 pts. per game avg. 14 pts., 6 reb.
Kimberly Rigg Mario Faranda center forward 11.1 pts. per game avgs. 5.4 rebounds
Mobile Belhaven Dillard Spring Hill SUNO Jan. 22: The Den Jan. 11: The Den Jan. 6: Away (N.O.) Jan. 27: Away Jan. 18: Away (N.O.) Feb. 17: Away Jan. 29: The Den Feb. 22: The Den Feb. 3: The Den Feb. 15: Away
LSU Shreveport Jan. 25: The Den Feb. 12: Away
The Enemy
William Carey Xavier Jan. 13: Away (N.O.) Jan. 6: The Den Feb. 24: Away Feb. 10: The Den
Tougaloo Jan. 20: The Den Feb. 8: Away
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY CATHERINE COTTON / THE MAROON
A WHOLE NEW BALL GAME Long road trips. Hostile environments. Well-studied opponents. The real season begins. By RAMON ANTONIO VARGAS SPORTS EDITOR
gets you to where you need to be for the postseason,” Plaisance said.
Although pre-conference tune-ups against LSU and Loyola-Chicago in the Windy City were challenging in their own right for the women’s and men’s basketball teams, conference play is a whole new ball game. It presents coach Michael Giorlando’s men (3-9, 0-2 GCAC) and DoBee Plaisance’s women (7-7, 1-1 GCAC) with unique challenges — hostile environments on the road; little time for players to finish their coursework; re-establishing momentum after a Christmas layoff and opponents focused exclusively on nullifying the Wolfpack’s strongest aspects of play into nonfactors. “Anyone playing college ball got there because they are competitive enough for every game to mean something. Conference is where it really means something,” said forward David Curtin, history junior. “We’re trying to get to nationals and not leave it up for grabs for anyone to vote on in the polls at the end of the season. We want to win conference outright.” It’s been a difficult start for the men, however, after a 70-62 loss to William Carey on Jan. 6 and a 69-64 loss to Southern University-New Orleans Jan. 4. The Wolfpack women, led by psychology sophomore guard Trenell Smith’s 17-point GCAC average and forward and criminal justice graduate Dani Holland’s 6.3 rebounds a game, justify similar sentiments — heading into the Christmas break, their play merited a No. 28 ranking overall in the NAIA thanks to 36 votes in the national polls, the most ever in school history, before settling at No. 37 once conference started. They faltered in a 55-51 loss to SUNO in their conference opener Jan. 4 but recovered with a 69-55 rout against William Carey at The Den on Jan. 6. “It’s a whole new season where the slate is clean. But the ante’s bigger, and it’s what
HOSTILE ENVIRONMENTS His third year playing for the ’Pack, Curtin has become well acquainted with the tougher venues of the GCAC and what playing there implies. “The Dock” at LSU-Shreveport is a notoriously tough environment to play in — it’s a 5hour bus ride from the oaks of Uptown New Orleans, so it’s a challenge to muster even modest maroon and gold support. “Their stands are full and always rocking. They are traditionally a good team, so the students and the school get really behind them,” Curtin said of the No. 6 team in the NAIA. “No one ever really gives us a chance against them, so it’s nice to take it to them.” On top of the deafening crowd, ’Pack defenders have to try to contain Freddy Hughes’ 31.6 points a game and Kyile Byrd’s 29.6, without mentioning Josh Porter’s average of 25.9. Porter, however, sustained fractured vertebrae in a mid-court collision in an exhibition against Southwestern Assemblies of God University during the Nov. 28 match up and faced grim possibilities of being permanently paralyzed from the neck down. Porter is expected to fully recover after a successful surgery. He may even return to face Loyola Jan. 25 and Feb. 12. “The dude’s incredible. He shoots five feet behind the three-point line and can jump out of the gym,” Curtin assessed. At Spring Hill’s Outlaw Center, the notoriously tough Mobile, Ala., venue that is home to Loyola’s fiercest conference rival, Curtin has become accustomed to abrasive heckling. When sizing up the goal for a free throw shot or simply defending, Curtin customarily absorbs lewd insults involving fornication with mothers, sisters, girlfriends and grandmothers. As an option off the bench, Curtin might not enter the rotation one night but play as many as 25 minutes the next.
“So if you’re on the bench, you’re an obvious target. They are like, ‘Hey, No. 15, why aren’t you in the game? ‘Cause you suck?’ And then when you do go in, they step it up. “They are ridiculous. There is no restraint,” he said, adding that a road loss in Mobile is an especially bitter ordeal with an emphatic nod. “Road wins are so important. It’s tough going into situations like those and getting positive results. To do that is a step in the process of becoming an elite team, and if you can win on the road, presumably you can win at home.” STRAINS OF STUDYING Women’s leading scorer Trenese Smith’s road schedule reads something like this: Embark on one-way bus trips as long as five hours. Unload, check into the hotel and unwind. Get to the gym for a shootaround. Eat Subway. Review film on the opponent. Be in bed by 10 p.m. Wake up. Go through a walkthrough of the game plan. Execute the game plan. Embark on the return bus trip, with teammates still harboring energy from the floor, causing a ruckus in the seats via entertaining anecdotes, laughing at the movie playing on one of the monitors overlooking the bus coach. Somewhere in there, win or lose, she’s to churn out a paper or read a book for her business class. “You do what you got to do,” Smith said. “You do stuff on the bus (regardless of the distractions), because you have to get your work done.” For a legendary procrastinator like Curtin, who makes the least of his time on campus and composes 10-page research papers for his history major on the bus and waits until deadline to cram a book, the sentiments differ — especially after a conference loss. “It’s hard to get your mind back to the level where you can read anything and retain it. In your mind, you’re going over every single thing
see GCAC, page 10