The University of Alabama at Birmingham Athletics
Fatiha Salaam's Blog
2/20/2009 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Feb. 20, 2009
Greetings Blazer Fans!!
I am here to give another update with the happenings with the UAB Womens Basketball team. Well, where I last left off, we were getting ready to play Memphis at home. We have recently played three games, two home games against Memphis and Tulsa, and an away game against SMU. Starting with our game against Memphis, unfortunately this was a loss for us. Memphis came into this game hungry for a win and we just done beating Tulane and UTEP at home, so somewhere in our Blazer minds, we were too relaxed against Memphis. For a few years, UAB Womens basketball has always been sort of a bully to Memphis and would win both games against them. But, Memphis came into this game focused and hungry. They had two conference wins before they played us and this time of year, if you do not come to play hard and with extra effort and energy, the game is anybody's. For some reason, we were not as focused as we should've been against Memphis. We gave up way to many offensive rebounds that hurt us in the long run. We had a lot of defensive slipups. Those short-comings cost us the game.
We could not hold on to the Memphis loss for long because we had hungry Tulsa coming into Bartow to try to steal a road win against us. This game started off slow and we struggled offensively in the first half and also gave up important offensive rebounds. We went into half time down, but we came out in the second half determined to end this game with a win. We went back and forth on runs with Tulsa, but finally in the last seven minutes of the game, we went on a strong run and did not allow Tulsa to take away our momentum. We picked up our defensive mindsets and pressed and trapped and caused many turnovers. We got offensive rebounds and we found our shooters to help put more points on the boards. We read their defense and scored at important times of the game. Although we got this win against Tulsa, we still started this game off way too slow. We sat back to see which team was going to set the tempo for the night, instead of us grabbing the wheel and taking control.
SMU was conference champions last year and they came and blew us out last year at our place. SMU was the type of team that hustled on every possession and crashed the boards hard. In order for us to steal a road win against them, we would have to match and exceed their energy and effort levels. Unfortunately, we sat back in the beginning of the game and watched to see who would take charge of this game instead of us setting the tempo. Then, the next thing you know, were were down in the hole 20 at close to the 10 minute mark of the first half. I know Blazer fans, we are very disappointed in ourselves as well. We ended up losing by 30. This loss is sitting very hard on me because I know that I did not play with more than 100 percent of my energy and effort. I understand that there are alot of injuries and aches going on with our team right now, but we have to dig deep, past the pain and stress and fix what ever problems are causing us to be so inconsistent right now. We have to find our focus and not lose it because we have four conference games left and we need to get all four of these wins. We have two home games against Marshall and East Carolina, followed by two road games against Southern Miss and UCF to end our regular season before going into the conference tournament.
Our focus right now is defense, defense, defense. We know that we can score. Coach Smith can draw up a play in a 30 second time-out and we could barely remember it, but still get a score off of it. But, what we have to change now is having the same intensity on defense that we have on offense. I know that is very late in the season, but it is not to late to turn this thing around. In order for this to happen, we all have to be on the same page and exceed every team we play from here on out. Personally, I refuse to leave the court the way I left it last season. That lost in the first round tournament game against Marshall in overtime on a last second shot hurt. It really HURT. But Blazer fans, please keep faith in us and keep believing in us. Please come out and support us this weekend as we play our final two home games of the season. We host Marshall on Friday at 7 p.m. and East Carolina on Sunday at 2 p.m.
Thank you for reading and GO BLAZERS!!
#32 Fatiha
