Another week has come and gone and two more games have been played. Unfortunately for the Red and Gold it was a tough weekend on the road. The road trip began on Thursday, December 7, against a quality Drury University basketball program that has a record of 59-5 in the last two seasons! Once again it was a wonderful atmosphere for college basketball, 1,500 fans (most of them for Drury), the band was playing and both teams were poised for the battle. The game was close most of the first half but then Drury went on a late run to take a 15 point lead into the locker room at halftime. We made a couple of adjustments during intermission and came out with a renewed energy to start the second half. Within the first nine minutes we had tied the score at 52 and now the game was a fight to the finish! We found ourselves down by four with 57 seconds to play and had to foul to stop the clock. Our hopes of missed free throws by Drury did not turn out as planned, they were able to hit five of six down the stretch and pull out a 71-63 win. I was truly proud of our effort in the second half, we showed a lot of heart and battled on every possession but just came up a little short.  
Our next opponent of the weekend was Rockhurst University on Saturday, December 9, in Kansas City. This game was much different than our game with Drury. There were seven lead changes and 14 ties in the game as both teams fought for their first conference win. The game was sloppy and the officials got involved by calling 54 fouls, 27 on each team! There were a combined 62 foul shots, 43 turnovers and it took an additional five minutes to settle the outcome. Once again we found ourselves on the short end of the final score losing 73-70 in overtime! Our inconsistent play in both games really cost us. We played two to three minutes of excellent basketball followed by two to three minutes of sloppy basketball. Our effort has remained high and there is a fight in this team that I like. However, we are making some mistakes at crucial times and still learning to finish close games. With half our players being new to our program each day in a learning lesson and with time we hope to be much improved. Our overall record is 2-4 and our conference record is 0-2. We take the next few days off so that the players can study and do well on their final exams before we take the floor again on December 19 with a home game against Harris Stowe. 
It has been a very tough semester for our basketball program. We have been without a basketball floor twice, our season interrupted and two games canceled by weather and power outages, we have played only once at home and eight times on the road, including our scrimmage and exhibition games, and we have battled illness and injury the entire semester! Even for a veteran coach like myself the first few months of the season have been a lot to endure. Still we will not feel sorry for ourselves, we will continue to work hard, learn and search for a little luck on the other side of hard knocks and tough times! 
Hope to see you from the sideline. Go Red and Gold!  

Posted by: Coach Buchanan

What a week!! Our basketball team really had a good week of practice and we felt as though we were ready for Indianapolis on Thursday, November 30. Then, Mother Nature decided to dump three inches of sleet and freezing rain on the city followed by 4 inches of snow! The university was closed and the game was canceled at 2:30, three hours before tip-off! Talk about being ready to go and then your entire day being brought to a scretching halt!!And because the school was closed we could not practice in the gym and we had to leave campus. So no game with Indianpolis, Mother Nature 1, UMSL 0!  
Now it was time to change gears and prepare for our Saturday opponent, Saint Joseph's College.  
Friday morning I was up and into the ofice by 9:00 am, ready to watch film on Saint Joseph's and prpare for practice with the team. Unfortunatlly, Mother Natures ice sculptures, known as trees, had fallen on to many power lines and there was no electricity to the Mark Twain Building, our gym! No power, no lights, no heat, nothing to help us prepare for our next opponent. We could not prctice and shoot or even watch game tape to prepare mentally. 
The power is yet to be on in our building as I write this on Monday, December 4 at noon. Needless to say the game with Saint Joseph's was called off and they went home. 
Mother Nature 2,UMSL 0!! 
I am not sure I have ever endured such a long five days in the middle of a basketball season. To be so energized and ready to play to being so helpless with no electricty and no where to make my team better. The bitter irony is that we have a very beautiful, very expensive, new basketball floor that we cannot even see because there are no lights! 
Our circumstances are not as bad as a lot of people in St. Louis, it has been a very bad ice and winter storm. However, for a basketball coach working every day to improve his team and trying to find ways to win games the last few days have been tough. We are already in December and have only played four games, one home game, and no conference games! 
We are hoping for things around here to become a little more normal this week. We will find a place to practice until the power comes back on and try to prepare the best we can for our next two opponents, Drury and Rockhurst. By the way, those two games will once again be on the road so it will be back to buses and hotels Wednesday through early Sunday morning!  
Stay tuned for more excitment from the sideline!! 

Posted by: Coach Buchanan

Another week of basketball has already come and gone and two more games are in the books. Much like the first two games of the season the last two games were good and bad.  
On Tuesday, November 21, we had our first home game, on our brand new floor, but things didn’t go as we had planned. McKendree College came into our building and shot the lights out! (50.9%) They played a very solid floor game and put a good 40 minute game together. We on the other hand seemed a step behind all night. On four different occasions McKendree hit shots at the shot clock buzzer to really kill our momentum. After digging ourselves a deep hole we showed a lot of fight and heart to cut their lead to one with 5:19 to play. However, we then hit a dry spell and did not score over the next 3:37. The final score was 68-75 and our record fell to 1-2. 
On Saturday, November 25, we loaded the bus and headed to Oakland City, Indiana, to play Oakland City University. It was an early tip-off, 1:00 pm, so we left the campus early Saturday morning. The game was up and down and at times it was very physical and sloppy. This time out we blistered the nets in the first half and shot 16-for-26 for 61.5% and held a five point lead at the half. The second half our shooting cooled off a bit and we went through another scoring drought, not scoring for almost five minutes. Still we managed to play good defense during the drought and we made shots over the last ten minutes of the game to pull out the victory 74-68. Both teams played hard and fought until the very end. We made crucial free throws in the last minute to seal the win and even our record at 2-2. 
Now as we head into December we are preparing for conference play already. We have Indianapolis coming to town on Thursday and then Saint Joseph’s on Saturday. It is going to take a lot of hard work to get ourselves ready for two really tough contests. Plus playing conference games so early in the season makes things even more difficult. 
Hope to see you from the sideline this week! GO RED AND GOLD  

Posted by: Coach Buchanan

The season has officially started and we have already played two games. The season started with our trip to Pittsburg, Kansas and I would say that it was somewhat successful and somewhat disappointing. We played our first game of the year on November 17 at the Chatter’s Roundball Classic at Pittsburg State University. We played the host school, the Gorillas, in a very exciting game in front of over 700 fans. It was a great atmosphere for a college basketball game, the band played, the air smelled of freshly popped popcorn and the fans were boisterous! The game was intense and each team played hard but we finally pulled away in the last five minutes to secure the win 75-65. It was a huge effort by our team, one that I was very proud of. We played smart, we played together and we executed the game plan very well. Even our defense was solid as we held PSU to 39% from the field and out-rebounded them by three. It was a good feeling to get the season off to a 1-0 start. 
Our second game came less than 24 hours after our first contest. This time we were matched up against Southwest Baptist University out of Bolivar, MO. SBU is an entirely different team than Pittsburg State and they caused us some tough match-up issues. They were a little smaller than us and much quicker. They seemed to all be able to shoot the ball from behind the arc and they seemed to never get tired. On the other hand, we were a step slow all night. Our defense was not as solid as it was just 24 hours prior and we did not shoot the ball very well. We gave effort and played hard but we just could not find the spark that could get us going. We were down by six points at the half but fell behind by as may as 20 points half way through the second half. However, we would score the next 13 points and cut the lead to seven but could get no closer. SBU hit back-to-back three pointers and went on to win 65-78. 
As I write our record is 1-1 and we have played two quality teams. Now we must put this weekend behind us and prepare for our next opponent, McKendree College. It will be our first home game of the season and our first official game on the new basketball floor. We are excited to play at home because we have been on so many buses and in so many different places over the last six weeks. I hope the UMSL fans will come out and see us in action. Tip-off is 5:30!! GO RED AND GOLD 

Posted by: Coach Buchanan

UMSL Basketball Fans, 
Welcome to our journey! The next few months of UMSL Women’s basketball should be exciting! I hope to be able to capture some of that excitement during the season and put it into my own words. I also hope to give our fans an inside look of what a basketball team endures during a grueling, four month, 27 game season.  
We start this season with seven returning players and six newcomers that will hopefully help us continue this long and sometimes frustrating process of building a championship caliber basketball program. The year has already had an interesting beginning with the loss of our gym floor because of storms that hit the St. Louis area back in July. We have had to find alternate practice sites and learn to be a basketball team without a home. It has been trying but as of Monday, November 13, we finally got to practice on our brand new floor! I really hope you have a chance to see the floor in person because it is beautiful! 
Our official season starts at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas as we open up in the Chatter’s Roundball Classic. We play the host school, Pittsburg State on Friday, November 17, and then play Southwest Baptist University on Saturday, November 18. It will be a tough test for our new club but UMSL fans can be assured that we will play hard and give a great effort! Check back next week for the recap of games from this weekend. GO RED AND GOLD 

Posted by: Coach Buchanan