Hello my name is Brian Fogleman and I am a senior at Buena Vista University. Buena Vista is located in Storm Lake, Iowa. I am from a small town of Manning, Iowa which is located about an hour straight south of Storm Lake. Manning is one of those towns where if you blink while driving through you will miss it. The guys on the team from bigger cities are always on my case about coming from such a small town. They all believe that since I went to such a small high school that I probably had to take my cousin to the prom. I take it all in stride and just try to throw something back at them.

We have one game under our belt so far this season with two home games this upcoming weekend. We escaped with a win against a very athletic Stout team from Wisconsin. We played Stout last year at home and they are a much better basketball team this year. Senior guard Kyle Stribe played a very solid game. He made a long three with two seconds left to put us up three. We were feeling good about ourselves at that point, up three and the Blue Devils needing to go the length of the floor. The best thing about the game of basketball, is that it isn’t over until there are zeros on the clock. Stout threw the ball in at about our free throw line, took one dribble, and chucked up a sixty foot shot, nothing but the bottom of the net. The gym was going crazy and we were going to overtime. We were able to make some free throws throughout overtime and limit them to taking some tough shots. We escaped with a 68-61 victory.

The game was ugly from start to finish. We turned the ball over too many times and it seemed as if we were a little too fast with everything. By being too fast I mean we didn’t take our time to set up the offense, we didn’t recognize who we had on defense every trip, and we just didn’t do a very good job with the little things. It was our first game and we had about six players see their first varsity minutes in their careers. It is easy to sit here and think about all the things we didn’t do right, however it is important to remember that we got out of there with a “W” and it is exciting to see how much better we can get.

Buena Vista has had a very rich tradition in basketball. Our program is ranked amongst one of the highest in the nation as far as attendance for each game. We only have roughly a thousand students enrolled in this university, but we still manage to pack the gym every home game. Our students section is hands down the best student section in the IIAC. Mainly filled with other athletes, they understand the importance of creating a great atmosphere and with that we take full advantage of playing on our home floor.

St. Olaf and Dordt College are coming to town this weekend. There is nothing better than Friday, Saturday home games. It will be very exciting to see how much we have improved with a week of practice under our belts after last week’s game. I appreciate the opportunity to write for D3hoops.com and since I have not done something like this before I hope to improve as the year goes on.

Go Beavers!

Brian Fogleman

Another year of hoops is here! I have to say, after sitting on the bench watching all of last season I’m pretty excited about this one! It is good to be back in a lot of different ways. After my injury last year it has made me appreciate different things that come from not just being around the game, but with playing the game.

It’s great to feel some pressure while being at the free-throw line by myself. It’s great to hit a few shots in a row. It’s great to have total confidence that the next shot is going in. It’s great to call a play in a huddle and have it executed just like I picture it in my head and have A.T. (Aaron Thompson) drain a three. It’s great being in the locker room with my teammates making fun of each other’s girlfriends or pulling pranks.

This past weekend was a fun one for the Washington U. basketball family. Tyler Nading and Tom Blount are both from Colorado and we had our opening tournament in Colorado Springs at Colorado College. It gave them the opportunity to show off our team and play in front of a lot of their friends, family, high school coaches and teammates that have never gotten the chance to see them play in college. It’s awesome that Coach Edwards is able to schedule tournaments like this, our tournament over Thanksgiving at Anderson University (close to Cam Smith’s home) and over winter break at Elmhurst College (we have a handful of people from the Chicago area) to allow friends and family the opportunity to see us play.

We won the tournament championship this past weekend after victories against North Park and Colorado College. When you walk in the gym at CC there is a big painting on the wall saying “Altitude 6,212 feet… Breathe Deeply!” and man they weren’t kidding. After the first game I was ready for the oxygen tank. My good buddy and conference rival in high school, Nick Williams plays for North Park and he even needed IV after the game—I’m not sure if it was just the altitude but it was definitely noticed by quite a few of our players too. Our exhibition game against Division II Missouri-St. Louis prepared us really well for the North Park game because of NPU’s athleticism and the different defenses they threw at us. I know they were shorthanded for a number of reasons but I’m sure they’ll turn some heads and knock off a few teams in the CCIW this year.

The next day we took on an emotionally charged CC team. CC was winless last year and they were coming off their first win in quite some time before taking us on in the championship game. I can promise this—that team is going to win more than one game this year if they play with that energy and intensity. That program is definitely going in the right direction and they have a nice group of guys. We got off to a good start but we were never really able to put them away. They hung around and hung around until tournament MVP AT buried a few threes at the end of the game to seal the deal.

I couldn’t be much more excited for our game this Saturday! Augustana is now 2-0 and we’re 2-0 and it should be a pretty fun battle between #1 and #2. Obviously it isn’t do or die at this point (like it was last March) but it will be a great measuring stick early in the season for both teams.

Until next time,
Sean

P.S. I want to thank Pat for giving me the opportunity to exercise my player-option on the second year of my blogging deal. I needed a gig in these tough economic times!

Just writing to let people know that we have some new Insider bloggers coming to D3hoops.com this season. We should start seeing blog posts from Iowa, New York, Texas and Wisconsin starting soon, as well as Insiders returning from last season, if they are interested.

Sean Wallis, who blogged for us last season as his Washington-St. Louis team made their run to the national championship, is healthy and ready to go on the floor for the Bears, and on the Net as well from what we hear.

Also, we’ll have our first Around the Nation column of the season coming out tonight, all in preparation for Saturday’s tipoff of the 2008-09 season!