An exciting week for basketball at Allegheny as both the Men’s and Women’s team prepare for the Greg Richard’s Memorial Tipoff Tournament this weekend. The Womens team will play Penn State Altoona and the Men’s team will face Pitt-Titusville on Saturday, November 15th. The tipoff is fast approaching and the teams are cracking down.

I joined the team the last thirty minutes of practice, no music playing this time, just the very distinct sound of basketball. I thought about one specific idea in practice today as I watched the Men shuffle around practicing. Momentum

Particularly, a play where one of the Men was running from the opposite court toward the basket and continued running causing him to slam into a wall.

How does everything look the same from day to day, but when looked back on a month, or even a year from now everything is different. How do you keep momentum going when nothing really changes from day to day, same court, same teammates, same coach. There are so many circumstances where it becomes difficult to keep the bigger picture in mind from day to day. In sport, this big picture is simple. Winning.

The Miami Heat is an interesting team to consider when thinking about momentum. After taking a hit by losing the best team in the NBA, the entire NBA community was convinced they would fail horribly. A couple weeks into their season and they are ranked number in their conference. There was constant chatter about Dwyane Wade not being able to carry his team like he used to, what they fail to recognize is, the reason why the load was light enough for him to carry is because of chemistry between the players. The equal amount of dedication hard work and faith in every one of your teammates. This is what keeps momentum going

Build up energy so it can go into the right play. Enough energy in order to store it in the right place. So it won’t have to go to waste. Perform.

I stuck around after the mens practice and noticed some magic going on with the women’s basketball team , stay tuned for that next week.

Until the tournament,

Emerald.