Hello Basketball Fans!

My name is Louis Hurd and I am currently a sophomore forward for the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Pointers.  I have been asked to blog our basketball season and am greatly honored to do so.  Over the next few months I will be blogging regularly about basketball and basically anything else that I think will be positive and informational to you bloggers out there, whether it be  useless trivia, humor, entertainment, or even politics if I'm hard up for material!  I will also allow you to accompany me and the rest of my fellow Pointers on our journey to capture the NCAA Division III Mens Basketball Championship!

The preseason has been one of ups and downs already.  We couldn't even wait until the regular season to run into some obstacles!  A few of us players have already battled injuries of which I am one.  I have a stress fracture in my right foot and will hopefully get cleared to play in a couple of weeks.  Three of our four seniors all got injured in our first scrimmage of the year against UW-Parkside.  Khalif El-Amin, our captain, hyperextended his knee.  Bryan Beamish, our other captain, dislocated his pinky finger.  Pete Rortvedt went down with a badly sprained ankle.  We did manage to get through the scrimmage and came out on top!

Parkside was our first of three scrimmages.  We traveled up to Michigan Tech the following week.  I say up because it is in the UP of Michigan.  What a drive!  Four and a half hours in four vans can take a toll on a team, but the lengthy drive didn't phase us as we swept the Huskies in three 20 minute segments of scrimmage.  We had to be on our toes on the way home, though.  It's best to be on the lookout for deer up here this time of the year!

The last exhibition is our Purple-Gold game.  The intersquad scrimmage is the most heated in my opinion.  The Gold team consisted of juniors & seniors while the Purp squad was held down by the freshmen & sophomores.  It ended up being a surprisingly close game but the old guys came out on top, winning 78-68.  I helped coach the Purple team and was proud of their effort to hang with the big dawgs.

We open up our regular season this Saturday at home against the Johnnies of St. John's University out of Minnesota.  I will not be cleared to play because of the bum foot so hopefully I will be able to give you an account of the game from a coach's point of view!  We're all pretty excited to get this baby underway.  We've waited a long time to get back in front of our fans in Quandt Gym.

And so our season begins...hopefully this season "points" to Salem, VA and the National Championship!

Until next time...

God Bless and Go Pointers!