Diary Series: Ryan Price, Asst. Coach - Southern

It is the end of December, and in college basketball that means your non conference portion of your schedule is about to wrap up and conference play is about to start up.  It has already been a crazy stretch for our basketball team.  We have not played a home basketball contest since November 11th against Dillard University and we wont play another home game until December 29th, between that gap we have played 11 road or netural court games between.  Now the good out of being on throad is that our program has won two games away from Baton Rouge for the first time in over two years.

We have a very inexperienced basketball team with only two seniors, and three juniors.  With a new coaching staff and an inexperienced roster, every second of individual skill development, watching film, and going through a scouting report is key for our basketball team and "Building Tradition Back" to Southern University.  Our guys are working like they have never worked before, our seniors are gaining tons of experience and have been good leaders thus far and our young guys are adjusting to the life of being a Division 1 student-athlete.

We have had a very demanding non conference schedule as mentioned before we have not played in front of our home crowd in almost six weeks.  We have played against some power conference schools during this stretch including Texas A&M, Providence, UTEP, Tulane and Rice and though we have lost those games for the most part we as a staff feel our ballclub has improved after each game. Also during this stretch we have played in South Padre Island against an improving Florida A&M ball club and a battle tested and last year's Big Sky Conference Champions Northern Colorado. Also during this stretch our squad went to play at Southeastern Louisiana and it was a homecoming for our head coach Roman Banks as he was an assistant at Southeastern for nine years.  Thought we are 3-9 we feel for the most part that our team has competed in each game.

As the fall semester ends our basketball program has done a good job in the classroom.  Our Academic Liason Rodney Kirschner has done a great job of making sure our student-athletes have been provided with all the assistance that they need while we have been on the road as well as providing them with tutors.  We preach to our players every day that academics is the #1 thing in our program and that you must use basketball to provide you with an opportunity to get a degree.  Both of our seniors are on pace to graduate by the end of the spring.

Wishing everyone a safe and Happy Holidays.  See everyone in the New Year!

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