University of Massachusets Athletics
UMass Women's Basketball Preseason Diary Entry 6: Kate Mills
November 13, 2005 | Women's Basketball
Nov. 13, 2005
Entry 6: Sophomore forward Kate Mills
This past week, we concentrated on our defense, conditioning and learning new plays. Throughout the week, all the players have been thinking about team goals for the season. Yesterday we decided on five team goals for the season and presented them to the coaches before our scrimmage against Northeastern on Sunday. The goals we set are challenging but attainable. We are going to focus on these goals throughout the season.
We traveled to the TD Banknorth Garden Sunday for an 11:30 game against Northeastern. Because the Final Four will take place there, they did a trial run of a championship during our game. It was exciting playing on such a famous court. We played well in the first half of the game, running our fast break and moving the ball on offense, but towards the end of the game we were sluggish. We ended up winning, but our team realized that conditioning and lack of aggressive play are still two hurdles we need to overcome and can hurt us down the stretch of a game. But no matter how we are playing, we are still staying together as a team and encouraging each other which is a big positive. Our team plays Delaware away this Friday for our season opener. I'm very excited to play close to my hometown, and I know for a couple of other players on our team it will be nice to see friends and family. But our main focus will be to open up our season with a win, so this upcoming week of practice will be very important. We will be working hard on our defense, moving the ball on offense, and just being more aggressive during practice. We need to be focused for the start of our season.
NOTE: This is the fourth in a series of diary entries leading up to the start of the regular season Nov. 18. For the next few weeks, a different player will submit an entry every couple of days talking about what the team is doing to prepare for the start of the season.