Bulldogs ready to surprise Valley faithful
Column by Carly Grenfell
Grenfell is a junior public relations and management double major and can be reached at carly.grenfell@drake.edu
It’s show time now. Two more conference games to close out the back nine of conference play and, at last, it’s tourney time. But first thing first — a quick recap of the Creighton game last Sunday. We had a great week of practice that left us feeling confident and fully equipped to throw an aggressive game plan at the Bluejays. The first time we faced Creighton, they came out gunning and we never recovered. This time was a completely different story. We were up seven at half. The game came down to the final few seconds, and unfortunately, we came up one point short. There’s no doubt we should have won. However, our team continues to grow more and more each day. We are playing some of our best basketball (but still have a lot more in us). I can’t help but be excited that we are starting to peak at the right time!
These next two games are huge. With the Missouri Valley Conference tournament right around the corner, all a team wants and needs is momentum. We have to continue to build off the Creighton loss and let it carry us into Arch Madness. I think we can do that most importantly through two more solid weeks of practice. It’s easy to grow complacent at this point in the season. It is a long, long season. But this is also the time of the month where teams separate themselves from each other. We can go one of two directions: up or down — I’m all for going up! I might add that even by stringing together solid practices, we won’t go far if we don’t believe we can. I know that we can compete and beat every team in our league. But we need an entire team on the same page to do so. Trust and believe when I say we are all on that page.
There is something about March that gets college hoops fanatics going crazy. It is one of the best times of the year, in my mind! So, if you are a college basketball fan, take your excitement, and multiply it by about five and add a few doses of game day jitters. That is the best I can describe how we players feel, even though it hardly does it much justice. It’s all about keeping your season alive, and it takes your best performances to do so. That sure does sound like a lot of pressure. Well, for the Bulldogs, not necessarily. That’s the beauty of being an underdog. Ideally, yes, it would be awesome if we had won more conference games. But that’s not the situation we’re facing this year. Now, it’s about playing the best basketball we’ve ever played. If that happens, then anything can happen.
It’s our time to shine. I truly believe that. I wish I could begin to describe how much fun our run in the tournament was last year. It was by far one of the best weeks of basketball I’ve experienced, and we didn’t even win it all. I can hardly imagine what that win will feel like, but we are going for it. There is no reason we can’t make some noise this year. Stay tuned, Bulldog fans.
