After A Break, USA Basketball Returns To Action Tomorrow Night
Normally the South Alabama men’s basketball team would have played a game last night, but the break comes and a good time for the Jaguars. The Women would have also played Wednesday night, but they too got some time off this week.
It comes after a disappointing loss to Louisiana-Monroe which was two days after the Jaguars broke their six-game losing streak with an 81-73 win over Louisiana-Lafayette.
It’s a time for Coach Matthew Graves and his team, who are 7-12 overall and 1-5 in the conference, to improve in order to try to make a run for the SBC Tournament. Currenty, they are in danger of missing the postseason tournament as only the top eight teams will participate.
Coach Graves told AL.com that the chance to get extra work in this week has been good. He said that the team was sharp early in the week but that Wednesday’s practice was probably one of the worst they have had all season. But he said that after showing the team the video from the practice that they turned around and had one of their best practices of the year.
Coach Graves keeps telling them that they just need to consistently do what the coaches are asking them and once that becomes habit, then the wins will come.
“It came at a very good time for us,” Graves told AL.com about the time off. “There’s no question that we’ve struggled. Even in the win against Louisiana(-Lafayette), we didn’t take care of the ball very well. In my opinion, we have not reached anywhere near our potential of what we can be. At the same time we can’t keep repeating the things that we do to not be successful because before long we’ll be talking that the season is over and we have underachieved. And that’s something that we certainly don’t want to do.”
The Jags will fly to Arlington, Texas this morning and will have a practice session later today. They will have a shoot-around on Saturday morning before their 7:30pm tipoff against UT-Arlington.
The Jaguar Men will go for their second conference win and to start their march towards the Conference Tournament. The Lady Jaguars will look to win back-to-back SBC games for the first time since they opened Conference play. The Ladies tip off at 5pm against UT-Arlington in Texas.