Eager to get their season underway, the men’s basketball team headed up to the Great White North for three days of nothing but basketball.
The NCAA allows teams to do an international trip once every three years, and Associate Director of Athletics and Head Coach of Men’s Basketball, Robert Colbert, jumped on the opportunity. Colbert chose to spend the trip in Montreal, Quebec.
With nine new players this year, a trip away from campus proved to be a perfect opportunity for old and new alike to get to know each other.
“I just think off the court and on the court it was a good three days we spent together as a team,” freshman Lucas Hammel said. “It was a great learning experience, to get familiar with the guys before the season starts,” he said.
Junior Thomas Doyle recognized his role on the team as an older player and as a role model for the younger players. “I didn’t know any of the freshmen” Doyle said, “So it was good staying with them, meeting them all and getting to know them on a personal level.”
Hammel appreciates Doyle’s efforts with the freshmen. “It’s been great, Tommy’s been great with all of the freshmen and taken us all under his wing, and showing us the ropes, basketball-wise, and overall at Keene State, so it’s been really great getting to know Tommy, he’s a great kid,” Hammel said.
Does Coach Colbert think this team is starting to gel together?
“No question,” Colbert said.
He also said that having this extended period of time together really brought the team closer and made the relationships between players stronger.
“Any time you spend some time isolated in a hotel or in a bus, or whatever, it forces guys to talk to each other,” Colbert said.
“The beauty of it was that no one’s cell phone worked in Canada. None of their cell phones worked, including mine, so we had to spend time talking to each other and getting to know each other,” he continued.
Colbert said that seeing the players having constant interaction with one another and doing everything together brought the team much closer. “It’s not just at practice, it’s not just at weight room sessions, it’s all day every day, including in the hotel. We’d eat breakfast, lunch and dinner together, we’d play together, went sightseeing together, traveled together. It’s a lot more intense,” Colbert said.
Assistant Coach Steve Boudreau, who graduated from Keene State College and the basketball program in May of 2012, said that the time in Canada really helped to mold the team and create bonds.
“I think it was a great team building exercise because you get to spend three or four days with each other, you eat meals together, you get ready to play, you share hotel rooms, it’s a lot of good stuff, and a lot of team building stuff —I think our team benefited from it greatly,” Boudreau said.
Boudreau said he also understands the roles that sophomores and juniors have, as far as bridging the gaps between seniors and freshmen, and believes that the team that he’s coaching now is more than capable of doing that. He said the upperclassmen have done a good job teaching the ‘little things.’
“Standing up when there’s a substitution, when a guy’s going out of a game, talking on the bench, our bench decorum, how we warm up, things like that. I think that our upperclassmen and our coaching staff have set that standard for the newcomers,” Boudreau said.
The Owls swept their three games in Maine, beating College Jean de Debreauf 81-65, Alma Academy 82-67 and Vanier College 86-79. The team’s effort impressed Colbert.
“We’re only seven days into [our season], where the teams we were playing were a month, a month and a half in, but we played incredibly hard, and incredibly well together. So I’m very encouraged by that.”
The Owls tip-off their season Friday, November 15, against Husson University.
Ray Waldron can be contacted at rwaldron@keene-equinox.com