{"id":14132,"date":"2020-01-24T15:56:36","date_gmt":"2020-01-24T21:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/?p=14132"},"modified":"2020-03-20T12:13:23","modified_gmt":"2020-03-20T18:13:23","slug":"basketball-teams-settle-in-for-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/2020\/01\/24\/basketball-teams-settle-in-for-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Basketball teams settle in for season"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Harding men\u2019s and women\u2019s basketball teams hit a rough patch early in their season over winter break. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the holidays both teams played four games each over the span of a week and four days. The women won two of the four games, and the men lost all four, leaving the men\u2019s record at 6-8 and the women\u2019s record at 7-7.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI just think it\u2019s a marathon,\u201d said junior guard Romeo Harvey. \u201cThere\u2019s going to be ups and downs, and I just feel like if we just stay together we will be better in the long haul.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The women\u2019s team suffered two season-ending injuries during the Christmas break games.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou hate losing people, especially to season-ending injuries, but that\u2019s a part of sports \u2014 especially in college sports,\u201d said head women\u2019s basketball coach Tim Kirby. \u201cThey\u2019ll both recover. One of them is a freshman, and one of them is a junior, so they\u2019ve got some time left to play, and they will recover from it and maybe be better than what they were beforehand.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the men\u2019s team didn\u2019t suffer <\/strong>injuries during those games three teammates <\/strong>received injuries earlier in the season, causing the team to rally together to fill the holes.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m encouraged,\u201d said men\u2019s head basketball coach Jeff Morgan. \u201cWith having this whole core back next year and adding two or three more people to the mix, I think we could have a really, really exciting season going forward next year.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The recent losses, combined with young teams for both men and women, forced the teams to reevaluate their strengths and weaknesses and to come up with practical ways to bounce back from this shaky start.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think there is a lot of areas we need improvement on because we are a good team, but we could also be so much better if we work on and fix the things we struggle with,\u201d said junior guard Carissa Caples. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe just need more experience,\u201d Harvey said. \u201cI think we need to improve on every aspect. I think we can do a better job shooting the ball and getting back on defense. Just like any other team, there\u2019s always room for improvement.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although winning is nice, members of  both teams said no matter what happens on the court or at the end of the game, they have something special on their team that many other programs can\u2019t cla<\/strong>im \u2014 l<\/strong>ove for their fellow teammates and the upmost respect for their coaching staff.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have a lot of respect for our program,\u201d Caples said. \u201cYou don\u2019t see many college women basketball teams like ours. You don\u2019t see many programs like ours because we got a very unique coaching staff. Our coaching staff really does care about us.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Harding men\u2019s and women\u2019s basketball teams hit a rough patch early in their season over winter break.  During the holidays both teams played four games each over the span…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15177,"featured_media":14133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15177"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14134,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14132\/revisions\/14134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}