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.

"Back on Track" (posted on January 16, 2012)

Welcome to the 9th installment of "Inside the Huddle". This past week was a huge week for our basketball program. Two conference games on our home court to get our season turned around and back on track. We had our backs against the wall and we could back down and turn away from the adversity or stand up and fight our way out. The latter is much more demanding. It takes hard work and resiliency. Good thing for us is that our team is filled with high character guys who were willing to do what it took to fight our way out from against that wall.

On Tuesday, Spring Arbor came to town. They have a solid team with one of the top scorers in the country at our level. We came into the game focused with a "we have nothing to lose" attitude. The game was very even in the first half with both teams making little runs here and there. We changed up our lineup a little bit to try and generate some new rotations and it proved to work pretty well. Spring Arbor started well in the first two minutes of the second half, but we calmed down and made a big run. That big run was led by Rob Taylor and Ben Severns who hit some long distance 3's to get us a lead that we would never relinquish. Spring Arbor made their runs back at us to try and close the gap, but we fought through our fatigue and finished the game. I was really proud of our team. We played the game hard for the full 40 minutes, something that we had not been able to do in the past few weeks. This game was a team win and we had a very balanced attack which was very encouraging. It was the win we needed to get the monkey off our back and now look forward to working our way up the conference standings.

On Saturday afternoon, we played Marian University. Marian's team was very similar to Spring Arbor's. They had two really good guards who could fill it up if they are left open. Like many of our recent games, the first half went back and forth with no team really pulling ahead by to much. We had a one-point lead going into halftime. We had not played especially well in that first half with 10 first half turnovers and we were getting beat 7-0 on the offensive glass. However, when we did get shots, we were making them as we shot 61 percent in the first half. In the second half, we continued to struggle with the turnovers and we were not making the shots we had made in the first half. They had a seven-point lead about halfway through the second half. We found ourselves staring at the same situation we had seen often in the past few weeks - a team was starting to pull away from us in the second half. The question was "are we going to let it happen again or are we going to do something about it?" We did the latter and got back within striking distance. Rob Taylor did what a senior leader is supposed to do during this stretch and kept us in the game making play after play to help us close the gap. We took the lead with about a minute and a half to play on a three-point play by Austin Semple. From there, we made timely defensive stops and Ben Severns got fouled twice in the closing seconds and he made all his free throws. We closed the game out to get our second conference win and start a winning streak. This was our best effort as a team at playing the full 40 minutes. We played hard consistently and fought for a hard earned W.

The most important thing now is to build upon these two wins. They were great wins, but we cannot be satisfied. As hard as we had to work get these two wins, we are going to have to work harder in order to continue our success, especially now as we begin to play teams for the second time. We know what teams are going to do and teams know what we are going to do. It now comes down to playing harder than your opponent and executing better than your opponent.

The Week Ahead:

On Tuesday, we go on the road to play Goshen. We have not played well on the road this year and we plan on breaking that habit on Tuesday. After the Goshen game, we will have finished the first round of conference games. On Saturday, we will start the second round as we travel to Grace for a 3:00 p.m. tip. Grace is the top team in the conference right now, and they beat us at home earlier this season. This will be an interesting game for our coaching staff as four of our coaches graduated from Grace, and three of them played for their coach, Coach Kessler. (Coach Graham played baseball at Grace.) So, that will add a little extra to the game.

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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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