Taming The Golden Bears

This was a game that was full of emotion both good and bad and it was a great test for us as a team on the road as a whole.  As a team we were looking forward to getting Concordia back for handing us our only loss on our home floor but there were many other things that tied into this game that we did not expect.  We went to shoot around at Concordia's gym on Friday before the game at about noon and everything went according to plan.  As soon as we were done however we were treated to a surprise.  A handful of the Concordia players were clapping their hands outside the gym and hooting and hollering at us as some feeble attempt of intimidation.  It was not until Coach Herbst went out and confronted them in his own way before they finally went on and about with their business.  However a couple of my teammates and I didn't just see it as an intimidation factor but as disrespect.  In my opinion all that did was add fuel to the fire for every single person on the team.
The game went back and forth for most of the first half but we ended up having a 2pt lead at halftime.  Nobody on the team was shooting the ball particularly well but we still managed to have the lead.  Before the coaches entered the locker room at half our team discussion took a little different turn then it usually does.  Everybody felt like because we wanted to beat this team so bad that we were playing outside of ourselves and not playing together as a team so we decided we had to get back to what we do best.  We ended up winning the game and that was the important thing because we learned more about our team as a whole.
This was not the only significant factor that I personally got from the game against Concordia however.  I have lived almost my whole life in Mineapolis which is the neighboring city to St.Paul so I had a lot of people that were at the game who were supporting myself and the team.  It was nice because when both of our teams came out of the locker room we got the louder ovation then they did on their home floor!  I also had a group of my loudest friends sit right behind their bench and add commentary to their team the whole game.  That was my little way of getting back at them for taunting us after shoot around before the game.  Overall it was a great win for our team and it was good for me that I got to see a lot of old family and friends again.