Two Big W's!

 Hello from Toronto!

This weekend we’re at the Darcel Wright Memorial Classic Tournament at Ryerson. Preseason tournaments are always a fun way to see teams from across the country and this weekend is no exception. We’re at the tournament with four OUA teams (Ryerson, Brock, Toronto, and McMaster), two CanadaWest teams (UBC and Saskatchewan), one RSEQ team (Laval), and one AUS team (us!).

We left Freddy on Thursday and flew directly to Toronto.  We arrived on time with no luggage drama (thank you Air Canada) and headed to the hotel.  Since we didn’t play until Friday afternoon we had the afternoon and evening off to eat and explore (read: shop) in downtown Toronto.

Friday morning we had a shoot and then headed straight to our pregame meal.  Afterwards we had time for a quick nap/relax time at the hotel and then off to our first game of the tourney.  We beat Brock 65-62 in a tough, physical game.  Some games have big highlights and “TSN Turning Points” but in other games you just keep grinding away – that was our game against Brock. Post game we showered and went for food then most of us went shopping (again…). 

With the spot in the semi-final today came an awesome 5:30 tip time so after our shooting practice this morning we got to go up the CN tower – a first time experience for most of us!  Tonight we played UBC and came out with a 76-60 win.  We took a lot away from the game.  We made a lot of mistakes.  We had whole stretches where we did things wrong. Sometimes our offense was stagnant, or we were getting beat off the dribble, we missed some boxouts, and so on.  We were far from perfect.  Despite all that we continued to take care of details.  We kept good spacing, we shot well from the outside, we denied looks into the post, and most importantly we kept our composure.  When the TBirds would string together a few baskets we fixed whatever was wrong without losing the things we were already doing right.

Tomorrow we play in the tournament finals against Saskatchewan.  The game was set for 4:00pm but that doesn’t jibe with our 7:00 flight so we’re playing early.  Tip is at 10:00am so on that note it’s off to bed for me (and for Dutchie and Fox too!)