Hi everyone,

I hope you are all doing well and getting ready to enjoy a great holiday season. I am currently at home in Crown Point, Indiana. We have four days off of practice before our next game (December 29 @ Wright State) which is the longest span of time I’ve had for Christmas since my freshman year of college, so I’m looking forward to enjoying the holiday and being with family.

We played a very tough game against Duquesne yesterday that we lost 77-64 to put us at 2-8 (1-1 in the Summit League) for the season so far. Duquesne is a very fast-paced and solid basketball team, but we really played them tough. It was a heartbreaking game for us because our players did everything they needed to do to put themselves in the position to win a game, but we just struggled to put the ball in the basket.  I thought we did an excellent job taking care of their pressure, our defense was solid, and we got plenty of shots but we just couldn’t knock them down. Right now, we are so close to where we need to be and we see small improvements every day. Once this team totally gels and finds a way to put it all together, I think we are going to be very dangerous. And the thing we keep reminding our players is that the goal is to win a conference championship, so all of these tough battles we fight only prepare us more for those games to come.

Personally and professionally, things have been pretty busy for me! Between traveling to play, recruiting trips, and all the craziness of the holiday season, it seems like I’ve been running around quite a bit lately. I tend to get in these moods where I need to just go, go, go, and about a week ago I spent a day Christmas shopping then came home to wrap everything and get prepared, then I wrote all my Christmas cards, and then I cleaned my entire apartment top to bottom!! It was a long day for me, but when I have order in my life it centers me. Lately, I’ve been trying to take up cooking/baking. I’ve really been getting in to it and loving every minute of it! Pretty soon I’ll have my own show on the Food Network and Emril will be calling me for recipes

Other than that, I’ve just been watching, listening to, and scouting basketball as much as possible. I have to agree with Coach Mann and what she wrote earlier about always having a game on. It’s so much fun now that I know coaches at other schools and watching their progress, and that combined with watching my favorite teams (Duke men, the Bulls, and the Celtics) has been great so far. The other team I’ve been following closely is my Chicago Bears who just had a HUGE win tonight over the Packers which is always that much more satisfying for me after living in Green Bay for four years!!

Well, I hope all of you have a wonderful Christmas and New Year with your friends and family! I hope Santa is nice to all of you, and that he puts wins on the court in all of our stockings! Keep working hard, and until next time… GO ‘DONS!