Another Day Another Assist

When former Umpqua basketball player Micaela (Williams) Leinonen needed some help getting her mom's house ready to sell, it only took one Facebook post and one text message to gather some extra help. I saw the post on FB saying that Micaela and her husband Chris were coming to Roseburg and were gong to try and cram a week's worth of work into one weekend and so I sent out a mass text to the current members of our team. Even though it was the last minute Mykiea Russell, Sparkal Clark, Priscilla Walker, and Jameia McDuffy dropped what they were doing and went with Linda and I over to the house where we spent the day moving furniture and painting. It was great to work side by side and fun to listen to Micaela and Priscilla compare Umpqua basketball stories and experiences. Even though they played years apart, a stranger walking into the room would have thought they were teammates! Jameia thought that working together like that brought us all a little closer and suggested that we find a house to paint as a team bonding event next Fall. Working hard, working together, appreciating the past, and looking ahead to the future. . . .it was a good day!!

Catching Up

It's been forever since I've written and so I really need to get everything caught up and current. We are currently 8-3 but our record might be a little deceiving. All three losses have come on the last day of eight team tournaments when we've played three days in a row. I'm certainly not making excuses or taking anything away from the teams that beat us but in the preseason it's really tough to run and press with maximum intensity for three straight days. Two of those losses came in a stretch right before and after Christmas where we had 6 games in 11 days with no practices in between.

Then why do we do it? First, because that's where our strengths are, second because it's fun and third because it allows us to play more players than many other teams, which helps them improve at a faster rate. And the faster they improve individually the better it is for all of us.

As far as the numbers go, we are first in the Pacific Northwest in average of shots made and attempted per game, we are second in in scoring, second in total offensive rebounding (first in average per game) and second in steals per game. (by half a steal) Mykiea Russell and Jameia McDuffie rank first and second in the Northwest in steals and Nneamaka Anyanwu is fourth in scoring.