“You don’t always get what you wish for. You get what you work for” is the saying that the young Suffolk University Mens Basketball team have learned this year.
Heading toward the end of regular season, the team is working harder than ever to finish strong and be fully prepared for the playoffs. With hard work comes improvement, we have seen plenty examples of that this season.
An example is freshman Frantz Pinard who has come up with great numbers and was awarded GNAC Rookie of the Week three times this season. Another flying freshman is Matt Duquette, who has been a starter in each game and made a lot of important blocks for the team.
Two other players who have made great improvements this season are upperclassmen Curtis Casella and Jake Meister. Both players have not missed a game and have come up with great numbers. Despite the improvement of the young team, the Rams have had a tough stretch lately, the recent Lasell game was especially a difficult one.
“It was a tough game, our guys played very hard,” said coach Adam Nelson who was not too exited about the result. “They made a lot of shots; they are a good shooting team. We had some things we wanted to do against them defensively. They made a lot of contested shots. It’s a tough environment to play on the road but we did okay. We have them come here on Thursday and my expectations is that it will be a better game.”
“We were not happy after that Lasell game. We need to kind of figure it out a little bit. We’ve got five games left and I think our guys are in a pretty good position to rally and finish strong. That has been our goal. We want to make the playoffs, which at this point it looks like we are going to be in.”
Right now the Rams are No. 6 in the conference with Rivier right behind at No. 7.
“Because we swept them [Rivier], we hold a tiebreaker with them,” said Nelson.
“Even though if they would catch us we still hold the tiebreaker. We just need to play our best basketball two weeks from now when the playoffs starts. We are excited about it and I think we are heading in a good direction.”
It seems like the Ram confidence is high and there is nothing that can stop them, not even higher seeded teams. This is the right attitude to have going into the end of regular season and into the playoffs.
“We feel we can beat anybody on any given day,” said Nelson.
“Right now Albertus Magnus are No. 1 in our league, they are No. 15 in the country, but on any given day I believe we can beat them. We know we can score, we just gotta stop the other team from scoring. Whoever we end up playing in the playoffs, we are fine with it,” Nelson said.
On Tuesday night, the Rams defeated Mount Ida 81-69 in an important conference win. Now it’s time to finish the season in style.
