I made my first road trip with the Demon basketball team in a month Friday, riding the bus with the boys to Conway, Ark., for Saturday's game at Central Arkansas.
There was an obvious upswing in the vibe around the team all day long, despite their on-court struggles. The players now seem closer and clearly are having fun while they work toward improving their performance in uniforms.
There was frequent laughter during the evening shootaround at the Ferris Center, capped by the entire squad mimicing injured freshman James Hulbin, who has torn ligaments in his right elbow he sustained in a practice fall at the outset of the SLC season in early January. Now that's not funny, but by now, watching the right-hander work left-handed has become commonplace and quite amusing to his teammates.
The frivolity included head coach Mike McConathy, who led the team on the court with a stumbling, exaggerated imitation of the on-the-move 3-pointer that his son, Michael, hit to end the first half of last year's dramatic win at UCA. Clumsy would be a kind description of Coach Dad's version of Michael's awkward but on-target buzzer beater last season.
Michael later tried to replicate Colby Bargeman's game-winning running 8-footer, leaning in and off glass, with 0.5 second left in overtime last year. Let's just say that the shot is a lot easier if you are 6-foot-6, not 5-9.
I had driven on my own to Nicholls and Stephen F. Austin, and due to football's National Signing Day haul on Feb. 4, was unable to get away in time to make it to Lake Charles for a 7 o'clock game that night. I was happy to miss that one, as it turned out, except for missing the chance to visit with friends like Cowboys coach Dave Simmons, McNeese SID Louis Bonnette and Cowboys AD and former Demon footballer and javelin thrower Tommy McClelland.
Seeing this group enjoying each other's company, which was not the case earlier this season, was refreshing and encouraging. Let's hope it carries over to good play Saturday. I think it will.
BTW - the team watched the movie "The Express," the story of the late, great Heisman Trophy-winning Syracuse running back Ernie Davis, on the drive up. It's not the best sports movie ever, but it was inspiring and pretty well done overall. The ubiquitous shots of the sports media are laughable at every turn ... writers weren't really pounding their typewriters at the outset of an afternoon football game, for example; and the thuggery of opposing players, with the Cotton Bowl game against Texas breaking out into a bench-clearing brawl, was far past cinematic license. But the bottom line product was a solid B.
Just wish that the movie folks would let a real great story be told completely truthfully. The message would have been just as effective.
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