The Norwich Guidon

The Norwich Guidon, student newspaper of Norwich University, is published twice monthly and has won numerous awards for excellence in its class.

Reporters, editors, and managers for The Norwich Guidon are students at the university who work under the guidance of a Communications faculty advisor. Student editors learn electronic pagination using state of the art computer equipment.

If you have any questions or comments about the paper, please contact Professor Ken Bush at kbush@norwich.edu.

NU Men's basketball team finishes season 14-12

By Mike Legere
Norwich Staff Guidon Writer

The Norwich men's basketball team has unexpectedly suffered some upsetting losses in the past few weeks. With five more games to go, they hope to turn things around.

Although they have already won four more games than they did last year, they have lost three out of their last four games.

"We are in a bit of a slide right now," said Steven Chambers, 20, a sophomore communications major from Springfield, Mass.

"We've lost three out of our last four games, and our last one was even harder, 'cause we were up 20, and we lost by 10," said Chambers, before their game against Southern Vermont.

The team seems to have problems in the middle part of their games.

"We usually play a good 25, relax for about five minutes, and that's usually when teams come in, and they kind of get us," said Chambers.

Geoff Hensley, a 19-year-old freshman international studies major from Cincinnati, OH, said, "We get a little tired, and sometimes we take the team for granted, like if we're up ten points at halftime, we think we've won the game, but we still have another half to play, so we kind of let up; which isn't too good, but we've changed that."

"We have a hard time rebounding," said Hensley." "We have a lot of big guys, but they're not that thick, so they get pushed around a lot.

At practice, we are busting each other's ass under the boards, and just getting all over each other, cause to win we've gotta be a little tougher."

Although the men's basketball team has had some problems over the past few weeks, they have always taken pride in their defense.

"We're leading the league in defensive points per game, holding some teams down to, like, 50 points per game, which is awesome.

"We do a lot of defensive stuff because defense wins basketball games," said Hensley.

The team has been practicing hard, constantly working to eliminate their weaknesses. They seem very confident for the games to come and aren't planning to finish the season without a bang.

"Our last couple of losses were shockers, so hopefully we are looking for a little revenge; we're looking to steal one from them," said Chambers.

"We're going to shock people when we go to the GNAC tournament, so they better watch out!" said Hensley.

In the GNAC tournament, the Cadets play Johnson and Wales in the quarterfinals, down in Rhode Island.

The Cadets won by a score of 77-56 to advance to the semifinals against the GNAC division leader Southern Vermont. In the semifinals against Southern Vermont, the Cadets lost 57-65 on Feb. 28.

The loss ended a great season for the Cadets. Norwich had three players finish with double figures in points: Adrian Ackles with 11, Ben Clark with 10 and Matt Johnson with 10.

The Cadets finish the season with a 14-12 record, the most wins for Norwich since they also finished 14-12 in 1997.