Throughout the course of the 2011-2012 season, MVNU sophomore forward Caleb Williams will write a weekly blog about what is happening with the team.

"Crossroads and Pork Chop Hill" (posted on October 31, 2011)

Welcome to the second installment of "Inside the Huddle." If you did not get the chance to read the first installment, I strongly encourage you do so. Now, here is this week's blog.

As soon as the guys on our team arrive on campus each fall, we look forward to this week. That is because it is game week, the week we have had circled since our season ended late last February. However, a lot of hard work is put in between our arrival on campus and game week, and to skip over all that hard work would just not be proper. So, here is a little bit about our preseason.

This year, we got three weeks from the start of school until we started our preseason. These weeks are the slowest weeks of the year for me because of the anticipation of another basketball season. The first segment of our preseason is conditioning and just the word makes some guys cringe. Our conditioning this year was much tougher than the previous year and guys felt the full effects of that. The first week of conditioning was brutal and hopefully the following few sentences can explain why. We start conditioning with a run we call the "Crossroads." It is a 2.5 mile run that has to be completed in 20 minutes. (Let me say this at the outset, our team consists of many more sprinters than it does milers.) If all members of the team complete the "Crossroads" the first day, then we do not have to do it for the rest of conditioning. However if all members do not make the time, then we all do it again the next morning at 6:30 a.m., and we continue to do this until we all make the run in the required time. We struggled with the "Crossroads" this year; (however freshman Travis Beckett did break the "Crossroads" record time completing the run in 14:06) it took us a whole week to meet our goal of beating the "Crossroads." That was a tough week. This was our schedule for Tuesday of the first week of conditioning, just to give a sense of our schedule for most of the days of that first week:

6:30 a.m.-Crossroads

10:20 a.m.-Lifting Session

4:00 p.m.-Abs Workout followed by eight 800 meter sprints which all had to be made in a time designated by Coach Moore.

We made it through and had a good final two weeks of conditioning full of sprints, Indian Runs, push-ups, long distance running, and HILLS. Now by HILLS I mean one in particular and that is what Coach calls "Porkchop Hill". "Porkchop Hill" is located by the K Mart on Coshocton Avenue in Mount Vernon. If you turn right off of Coshocton Ave. to get to K Mart, you go up a steep incline to get to the parking lot. As you drive up this incline, look to your right and you will see a steep grassy incline which will now forever be known as "Porkchop Hill." We ran sprints up that hill for about an hour and by the end your legs were no longer in pain they just stopped having any feeling whatsoever. I challenge any of the readers from Mount Vernon to give "Porkchop Hill" a try; just one trip up the hill will be enough for you to get a good understanding of the true power of "Porkchop Hill".

Once conditioning ended, we went to the second of three segments of our preseason. This segment was Defensive Mini-Camp. Defensive Mini-Camp was all defense all the time. It was a lot about technique and positioning. We thought defense was definitely an area we needed to improve upon and our efforts during this week of mini-camp will hopefully allow us to make defense a strength of our team this year.

Our third segment started on October 1st with the first day of practice. The first day of practice is awesome. Everyone is juiced to be back in the gym competing and playing the game we all love. Throughout the early practices, we continued to focus on defense and rebounding with offense sprinkled in here and there along the way. We worked hard, learned, and started progressing as a unit. One thing we really wanted to develop through these practices was a swagger or the preferred term used by most of our guys "swag." Swag for us means a strong sense of confidence and attitude. Swag is right on the border between confidence and cockiness. Swag allows opponents to know that no one will come into our gym and beat us, it's the way we carry ourselves, the way we react in both positive and negative situations. We are continually striving to develop this swagger and as we continually gel as a unit we can see everything starting to come together.

The Week Ahead:

Like I stated at the beginning, this week is game week and our team is ready to go. We start our 2011-2012 campaign Tuesday night at home against the University of Northwestern Ohio Racers. The game is slated to start at 7:30 p.m. Later this week on Friday, November 4th, we have the opening round of the A+ Autobroker's Invitational Tournament which is held here on the campus of Mount Vernon Nazarene University. Siena Heights and Ohio Christian square off in the first game starting at 6 p.m. followed by your Cougars competing against OU-Zanesville with tip-off at 8 p.m. Saturday is the second round of the tournament with the consolation game tipping off at 2 p.m. and the championship game at 4 p.m. So there are three chances this week for you to see the Cougars and hopefully you can make it to all three games and we will do our best to make sure the Cougars come out on top in all three games.

Peace be the Journey,
Caleb Williams #5

Feedback is always welcomed, so feel free to email me at cwilli10@mail.mvnu.edu or follow me on Twitter: @5CWill.

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