Road trip brings two wins

Brandon Meawasige

Assistant Sports Editor

In hosting the Ryerson Rams and Toronto Varsity Blues on Dec. 2 and 3 the Marauders men’s basketball team will look to improve on a 5-1 record and round off the first half of their 2011 schedule in style.

McMaster ended their recent road trip with two victories in Kingston, one coming against Queen’s on Nov. 25 by a score of 89-62 and another against RMC on Nov. 26 by a convincing margin of 98-51.

Off to a great start, the difficulty for this young team will be maintaining their composure and focus.

“The important thing for our guys is to understand how we’ve done it,” said Mac coach Amos Connolly. “What’s dangerous about success going to their heads is that feeling when you take your foot off of the gas or start making changes your preparation.”

Connolly’s concern is that his team’s early success will somehow cut into their competitive drive. “When winning goes to a team’s head is they feel they can win without working as hard,” Connolly said.

Although their record may indicate otherwise, keeping consistent pressure has indeed been an issue for the Marauders this season. In their season opening loss to powerhouse Carleton, Mac fell victim to a third Quarter Ravens run that would eventually be the difference.

“We need to work on our consistency coming out of breaks, in the start of game, the second quarter and halftime especially. If you look at that [Carleton] game for example, that run at the start of the third quarter was eventually the difference,” says Connolly of the improvements his teem needs to make in order to continue their success.

Preparing for the weekend, the Marauders will need to analyze the games this season in order to improve on their consistency. In addition, Connolly and his team can look to last year in which they lost two early season games to both Ryerson and Toronto.

“Playing Ryerson with Jahmal Jones, who is a national team level point guard, is a challenge. These two teams give us something different. Well have to focus this weekend if we are going to be successful.”

The first of the two weekend games will be Toronto on Friday Dec. 2 at McMaster’s Burridge Gym tipping off at 8 pm. The following day Ryerson will also visit Burridge for a night game.

As for what his team has been doing right, Connolly suggests that the key to success is on the defensive side of the ball especially the interior, given the lack of a pure scorer.

“They have really committed themselves to defense, for us to be successful given that we don’t have a go to guy, we have to be a sound team and defense has to be at the forefront of that,” said Connolly.

“Taylor Black and Nathan Pelech have both been playing well, they played well for us last weekend, we need decent play from our big guys and we also need to establish someone as a lockdown defender.”