Its been a hard week for me losing my beloved grandmother, a high school teacher of mine who had a great impact on my life, and had to suffer through watching St. John’s sleep walk through their game against Georgetown. That may have been my most embarrassing moment being attached to St. John’s University. I thought the team would have some fight in them after being embarrassed by Pittsburgh and Louisville the last week but its apparent that they have given up.
I played on the Men’s Club Volleyball team at St. John’s and we suffered perhaps my most embarrassing loss at the hands of Duke. I was particularly upset because it was Duke, there was a rival of mine in high school on the team, and they wore shorter shorts than John Stockton(ironically this game was in Salt Lake City, Utah). We were a team who was without our captain due to injury and by what we put out on the court many thought we were going to get smashed by #1 team in the country Arizona State in our next game. We were all pissed about our big loss but we sat down and went back to basics and went around asked ourselves why do we play for this team? Why do we want to play this game? What are we playing for?
It was obvious we all loved to play the game and we had fun doing it. Practicing 3 hours a day 6 days a week and on the road every weekend without getting a scholarship takes some dedication. We had to remember to trust in ourselves that we put the hard work in practice and we were a pretty good team(#32 in the country). We came out the next game against Arizona State and we stumbled early on but rallied late and dominated the rest of the way for the biggest upset win of the season.
I don’t see this team showing any of the resilience to want to fight back. I know they are down an don’t want to lose but they can’t just hang their head in between their legs. The pressure has gotten to them and that is no way to play. Forget everything. Forget the record. Forget the fans. Forget everything. Start from scratch and remember the reason of why you play the game.
On a side note I usually try and find a video that ties in with the team and I decided to find girls in bikinis because its about 80 degrees down in Florida and hell we could all use a little something to smile about.
-The Game-
On Saturday February 2nd, the Red Storm of St. John’s University will take on the Bulls of South Florida. The game will be played at Sun Dome, with tip-off scheduled for 7:00 PM. This Big East contest can be seen on MSG and heard live on Bloomberg 1130-AM.
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