FGCU's Brittany Kennedy's Day 3 journal: Preparing for North Florida in the A-Sun Tournament

Day 3: March 7, 2013

My alarm was set to go off at 8:50 am to get up for breakfast, but since I couldn’t sleep anymore I was up at 8:10 am. I’m really loving being able to sleep in and wake up to sunlight outside and not the stars. I love gazing at stars, but it isn’t the same going to bed and waking up to them. For breakfast I had bacon, juice, and breakfast potatoes again. I had a light breakfast since we are having progress (our name for practice) shortly after eating.

Practice went great today. Before we started Coach (Smesko) talked to us again since we weren’t able to get on the court again. This first progress we were going to focus on one of the possible teams, North Florida and doing shooting. Coach discussed personnel and how we were going to guard each of their players. Along with personnel came with how North Florida would guard us and how we would use that to our advantage to help us be best prepared and successful.

To get warm after our talk, we did our usual laps, just to get our muscles moving. We split into guards and post today. On the guard end we worked on guarding dribble penetration and keeping the ball on a side when a guard penetrates and pitches and cuts out to the same side they just pitched it to. We’ve done this a lot during the season, but today it was better and Coach (Abby) Scharlow didn’t have to stop us but a few times to give us reminders about guarding and being ready to guard.

North Florida played us the close both times in the regular season, so if we are playing them I know we all want to be ready and bring our best game. Our communication on a couple of their sets gets rocky and that usually stems from having weak communication. Today was a different story. Everybody on the court was loud and communicated early to make sure we defended the way we wanted to. Coach even said maybe we’ll guard them better. I feel we will if they are the team we are playing tomorrow. Again we did shooting where I shot with Sarah (Hansen) and Betsy (Adams). Practice went well and we walked away from the court with a good feeling of what we’re doing potentially playing North Florida.

Back in our room Sarah and I showered quickly so we could go watch the Mercer/Jacksonville game. Betsy came with us; the coaching staff was already over there. Again the game didn’t get off to a good start from either team. I got the feeling all teams had the excitement factor of the tournament being here and again having to play a team they already played twice this year. The game stayed closed with both teams going on runs; in the end Mercer protected their home court and advanced to the semifinals vs. Stetson.

Walking back to the hotel added some excitement. Coach decided he wanted to power walk back. The rest of us laughed at him because we all knew when we caught up to him at the hotel he would say I’ve been waiting where were you guys. So, Betsy and I decided to pick up our pace and once we got a little closer we would sprint past him. We took off sprinting to the front door which was only about 20 yards away. Betsy and I clearly beat him, but he felt he won. Wrong lol! The lady at the front desk ended up being the judge and saying we got him just at the end. Coach says we’re wrong, but we had an eye witness saying Betsy and I were the winners. Betsy and I (1)...Coach (0). #victoryisours