This is week seven in a season-long blog by Canisius senior guard Bob Bevilacqua. "Bobby Drinks" will provide an insider's look at the men's basketball team all season long, and this week discusses the start to conference play and the impending finals week at the College.

We open up when Loyola comes to town on Friday night and Manhattan plays here Sunday afternoon.  League games are a little different than non-conference games in that we know our opponents so well and they know us just as well.  Every team in the league knows each other's plays, defensive strategies and player tendencies.  When preparing for a non-conference opponent, our scouting reports are derived from a few of their recent games, whereas MAAC scouting reports stem from years of games.  Because of this, games come down to which team executes better and plays harder.  Needless to say, these first two league contests are very important and we want to start off the league schedule 2-0.

A focus point in the Loyola game will be our defense in the first 10 minutes.  Our defense in the opening portion of the first half has not been up to par so far this season.  In our last game at Eastern Michigan, we struggled defensively in the first half and it ended up costing us the game.  In practice this week, we have drilled defense and have made a few minor adjustments that will allow us to play smarter.  At times, our over-aggressiveness came back to hurt us against Eastern Michigan, and they were able to get some open looks at the basket.  Our goal every game is to hold our opponents to under 40 percent from the field, and if we do that this weekend, we believe we can be successful.

Early in the season, our offense has been a little ahead of our defense.  We have some good athletes that make our fast break pretty effective in getting transition layups.  When we run our half-court offense, we have instilled seven guidelines that all work to effectively force the defense to work hard to guard us.  For instance, one of the seven is to avoid early long jump shots in our half-court sets.  That's not to say to if someone is wide-open, that they shouldn't take the shot, but it does imply that an open jump shot will be open regardless after making the defense work for twenty seconds.  We review these seven guidelines almost every day, and they have helped our patience to get the best shots possible.  It makes offense easier, as well, because most teams are stronger defensively in the first 10 seconds of a possession than they are in the last 15 seconds of the shot clock.

Exam week is coming up, and most of the guys have been finishing up their final papers or presentations for the semester.  Pretty soon, it will be winter break, which obviously means just basketball and no classes.  There will be nobody else on campus as most students go home for the month-long break.  This is when most teams improve the most, because everyone's full concentration turns to basketball.  A lot of our time during that month off is spent at the gym or hanging out together, getting food or going to the movies as a team. We're already a pretty close group, but a month together where we focus on just basketball is something we're looking forward to. 

Until next week,

Ciao

- #10 Drinks