Portland senior Luke Sikma has taken on blogging duties for the men’s basketball team and he’ll be checking in from time-to-time to give fans an in-depth look into the program. Make sure to bookmark www.portlandpilots.com/SikmaBlog and follow Sikma and the Pilots all season.
You can send Luke any questions, comments or feedback that you might have by clicking HERE.
Previous Entries:
Blog #2
October 26, 2010
Hey Pilot Fans! As some of you may know, this past week was Fall Break, which meant no classes for the whole week and a much needed vacation from homework, tests and projects. Fall Break also meant the start of official practice as well, and since we weren’t bogged down with our hectic class schedules, we were lucky enough to be able to practice not once, but twice a day! So while most of the student body was at home sleeping until noon and having their mothers do their laundry for them while they sat on the couch watching TV, your Pilots were hard at work in the gym. Another twist this year was that with the installation of the fancy new video board, only the side courts were available for most of the week so we decided to hit the road and head south to the United States Basketball Academy about 45 minutes outside of Eugene for a 5-day training camp. The guys were pretty excited for our excursion since it represented an opportunity to get away from all the distractions of campus and really focus on hoops. Jared Stohl was especially excited because he had heard there was a fly fishing pond on the Academy property. However, his excitement was short-lived as he realized he’d forgotten his trusty fly rod at home.
We arrived at the US Basketball Academy on Monday afternoon and by the end of the evening’s practice you could tell it was going to be a good week. Everyone was competing and working hard, and the newcomers were doing a great job picking up the offensive and defensive principles. Now I won’t bore you with a detailed schedule of the week’s happenings, but here are a few highlights:
-Every night after dinner was ping-pong hour. Jared Stohl and Director of Operations Colin Pfaff proved to be the dominant duo eerily resembling the Shaq and Kobe dynamic of the “3-peat” Lakers. Colin had the tantalizing shots and clutch winners that were vintage Kobe while Jared showcased his dominance at the net and intimidating presence reminiscent of Shaq’s prime.
- One night, John Bailey thought it would be a funny prank to take the TV remotes from all our rooms and hide them. Unfortunately for John, the newest episode of “Swamp People” on A&E was airing and we weren’t going to let some little prank interfere with our viewing pleasure. After brief interrogation, it was obvious that Bailey was the culprit. With a little “encouragement” from me and Jasonn, he finally gave in and told us where the remotes were and everyone was able to get their fix of quality television.
So after a great week of practice, we returned to campus for our open scrimmage on Saturday. Considering we’d just been through a week of double days I thought we competed and played hard the whole scrimmage, but it’s obvious that we still have a lot of things to improve on. The improvement starts in practice, which is exactly where will be this week so we’ll need to take advantage of our opportunity to continue to improve! Go Pilots!
Until next time!
Luke Sikma #43
