Caltech

Happy Holidays Ahead

            I want to wish everyone happy holidays as we wrap things up for first term here at Caltech.  Although we are in the middle of finals now, I still feel that sense of relief that always comes at the end of classes (the last week before finals).  The finals period is more relaxing for me then classes this term because a few of my classes had intense homework loads in lieu of final examinations.  However, I still have two final exams and one paper to write, with one of the exams being unlimited time.  An unlimited time final is a fickle beast, sometimes it can last 2 hours, and sometimes 30, but the best part is that they are almost always open book, and you can take as many breaks as you want during your work.

 

            During the exam week we keep our practice schedule up, but move it a little earlier in the day (2 - 4) so that we have plenty of time to take finals in the evening and into the night.  We are preparing for our next game on the 13^th, which will pit us against a strong Chapman team from the LA area.  They are not in our conference, but are regularly good enough that they could be competitive in our conference finals if they were members.  So it will be a good test to see how we stack up with some of the other teams in the area because Chapman usually schedules every other team in the SCIAC for pre-season.

 

            For now, I am focused on the final push, and then I will be happy to see winter break start.  We remain on campus for the first week (until the 19^th) so that we can play two other teams before returning home (Santa Cruz here I come!).  We usually have some fun team activities during this time, and the time around new years when we get back, because most of the other students are not around.  We do a lot of team dinners and other organized activities.  Still, it’s always great to get a week or so to go home and see the family!

 

            This will be my last blog for the time being, it was a lot of fun to relate the term to you guys as it passed, and I look forward to the admissions news soon.  I will still be active replying to any questions or comments that are posted on the existing entries to do feel shy about contacting me!  With that, I wish you the best of luck in your college search, and hope you have a great holiday break!

Tough Games and Good Food

            I hope everyone had a nice break last week, I know I enjoyed taking a little bit of time away from studying to relax.  My mini-trip out to Palm Springs for Thanksgiving with my girlfriend and her family was very nice.  At the resort where we stayed they had an amazing buffet dinner, with everything from cheese platters to prime rib, and even a chocolate fountain.  Of course there were traditional dishes like turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie, but I also had sushi for the first time ever on thanksgiving!  We had 3 games in 4 days over the extended weekend, which was a tough test of our conditioning, but we made it through although we did fail to pick up a win.  We know we are certainly off to a slow start, but every game is a new chance, so it just doesn't make sense to let that hang over our heads.

 

            The first game was against Oberlin College from Ohio, an arts and science school with a small student body (but still 3 times the size of us).  It was a tough game with a slow start, but they opened it up with a 10 point run to make it 18-10 half way through the first half.  We closed the half down a little more than that with a 16 point deficit, but came out harder in the 2^nd.  All told, we were outscored by only 2 points in the second half, but didn’t quite come close enough in the end to make it a tight one.

 

            On Friday we played a tough Whitworth team, with a big line up.  Despite starting some of their younger players, they served us a strong defeat through relentless post play and unyielding defense.  For Saturday we reorganized for a game against our annual rivals UCSC.  Unfortunately we did not sink enough baskets in the first half to capitalize on our great 2^nd half play.  We outscored UCSC 30 – 22 in the 2^nd, but we dug ourselves into quite a deep hole before that which we just couldn’t climb out of.  For a hilarious picture of me getting an offensive rebound in the second half vs. UCSC you can check out http://www.gocaltech.com/sports/mbkb/index.  Don’t ask me about the expression I am making… lets just call it determination :).
 

            We look forward to two weeks without games to process the experiences we got from the games we have played so far.  We have become something of a 2^nd half team, but we need to change this.  It’s just too hard to play down the whole game, trying to pick at the other teams lead 2 or 3 points at a time.  We find it hard to let the offense come to us in those situations and often get frustrated trying to make too much happen in just one play to get back into the game.  Over the weekend we saw great minutes from some of the players off the bench, but we demanded a lot of time from our starters and I think we were feeling it in our legs yesterday and today.  For now however, we push though as always, and keep looking forward to our next opponent.

A Break in the Action

            Yay!  The week of thanksgiving is finally here!  A week for us to get our batteries recharged for the last push through finals week.  I am excited to take a few days to relax and play some basketball in one of the best tournaments of the year.  We joint host the Thanksgiving Classic with Occidental (our nearest conference neighbor) this year, which means very little traveling.  On Thursday we have morning practice to get ready for our games on Friday and Saturday, but after that I am going to head out to Palm Springs to have Thanksgiving dinner with my girlfriend’s family.

 

            One of the best things about Thanksgiving break (we take Wednesday through Friday off from school like most other institutions) is that homework that would regularly be due this week is usually pushed back until next week.  This gives people a chance to either catch up in whatever classes they may be struggling in, or get ahead in a class they know will be hard to complete by the end of the term.  It’s a great weekend to write final essays for humanities classes or make progress on lab reports, but for some it is also nice to just be able to watch some football or visit some family members without having to worry so much about school.

 

            This year I am thankful that the election is over and hopeful that our country is ready to make some forward progress now that we aren’t fighting over our next leader.  I am thankful for health and the continued opportunity to be in college down here in beautiful Southern California, and the opportunity to attend school with my amazing girlfriend of two years.  I am thankful for finding a job opportunity despite the floundering economy, and I am thankful for the piece of mind I hope that will bring me as I finish my senior year.  I am thankful for my family and look forward to seeing them all for Christmas.  I hope that there are many things for you guys to be thankful of as well, and I hope you take some time to really think about these things over the week!

First Game High(and low)lights

    Well, we had our first official match against a D3 opponent last Saturday and we got a chance to work through the first-game jitters.  Unfortunately there were plenty of jitters to go around and we didn't get the win we would have liked to start our season with. (Beavers always look at each game they play with a belief that they can win, no matter who the opponent is)  However, like the exhibition game and our scrimmage with ASU (Nov. 7), a lot of good things came out on tape.  La Sierra exposed gaps in our defense, and stymied our offense with their half-court trap late in the first half, but these are both very clear areas that we can work on.  Additionally we found them running out on us after our missed shots, which exposed a necessity for us to really get back on defense quickly.

 

            Since Saturday, we had individual meeting to go over some of the footage of the game, and have been working on the things I mentioned during practice.  Of course its still early and we are still trying to fit the pieces together, but with our next game on Friday, we are excited to try again.  I think the guys are ready to pay more attention to taking care of the ball as we get into our offense, and everyone is getting ready to run the plays as a team (not just individually).

           

            With flu season upon us, we are trying our best to fend off the bug, and so far we haven’t had any guys fall ill.  We are of course doing all that we can to keep our nutrition up, and stay hydrated as others in our dormitories begin to become infected.  I haven’t felt it come yet, but my roommate just got it so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

 

            Lastly, as promised, we got our pictures uploaded to the web a few days ago and they turned out great.  They can be viewed here: http://www.louisfelix.net/pickpic3/gallery/splash.php?gallery_id=279

Check them out and let me know what you think!

The Beavers Get a Make Over =D

    As promised, the new uniforms have arrived.  They're great! (Or should that be grrreat! given our colors?)  They are really comfortable, and actually cover our knees! They arrived just in time because not only is our first official game on Saturday, we have pictures tomorrow morning.  I know most teams don't get very excited about pictures, but as it is Caltech we have found a way to make them different and unusual.  Like the women's team did a week and a half ago, we have invited an up-and-coming professional photographer to come do custom pictures around our beautiful campus.  That means no more boring bleacher backgrounds, but palm trees, and amazing architecture instead.  I suppose we could have seen this coming, as an amazing number of wedding pictures are constantly being taken around our campus.

    In fact, our campus is so renown for its beauty,  film studios just love to shoot TV shows and Movies here.  Among the things that have been filmed here are Beverly Hill Cop, Greek, and Numb3rs (at least the last show is appropriate!). 

    So, I have included a little sneak peek at our new uniforms, but hopefully when the real shots come online I can link to them.  In the mean time you can check out the walls behind me in my dorm.  Students are allowed to paint murals on the walls here, so we leave no wall space uncovered.  Below, I included a few shots of other paintings in my house.  Really you could paint almost anything you want as long as you submit your design before hand and it is not overly offensive.  Newer designs generally replace the oldest ones, unless the existing designs have significant lasting importance (such as house propaganda or particularly excellent renditions).

    These examples are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to house traditions, but I will save descriptions of this excellent part of Caltech culture for either Wikipedia or some of the other blogs.

    I hope that everyone who wanted to take part in early action at Caltech got their stuff in on time last week and finally got some time to relax!  I remember the grind at the beginning of senior year in High School, but after the applications are all done, believe me, it really will get back to being the best year yet!

    For me, its back to work for an hour or so, but then to sleep.  I had my first in-person interview with a potential employer on Monday, and have another company lined up for tomorrow afternoon.  Its hard to juggle these things into my normal routine, but I am finding a way!

 

Exhibition Game

    This weekend we had our first trial against outside competition.  A traveling team from Australia came to our west coast to play us, some of the other teams in our conference, and a few teams in Arizona.  They came with a 10 man roster and a player-coach, all in their mid-twenties, with height ranging from 5-10 to 6-9.  Needless to say, we felt slightly outmatched in terms of size, but we came out with a deeper bench then them (a rarity for us).  While we were certainly excited to kick off our season, the effects of a long week of practice and studying showed in our legs at 10 am on Saturday when we got to the gym for warm-ups.
    Before games we meet in street clothes to go over strategy and scouting reports, then head to the locker room to change.  An exciting side note about this year is the prospect of new uniforms.  They have been ordered, but have not arrived yet.  For people outside the program, this might not seem like a big deal, but if you got a chance to wear our jerseys you would know how old and small they are getting.  Even at Caltech, we like to believe we have some sense of style, and those old numbers just aren't cutting it anymore.  But anyways, on to the game.  I was very happy to see my team come out with defensive energy in the first half, holding the Australians to just 30 points, while our offense kept us close at 29.  We had great help off the bench when Ryan and I (the starting big men) got into early foul trouble and we had to put some smaller guys on their 6-8 and 6-9 forwards.  We put ourselves in a fine position to compete in the second half, where we gained the lead in the first few minutes, but we seemed to run out of gas shortly after.  A few tired turnovers that became easy layups for them put us back behind, and we had trouble getting our offense going again.  We didn't come out with a win, but we came out with a good look at how our offense executes, and how effective our defense can be.
    We came away with some good experiences, and video tape for review, but I was most happy about the way the players showed up for practice on Monday, ready to work hard to fix some of the things that needed to be tightened up from Saturday.  I am excited to compete again this Friday when we play another exhibition game.

Beaver Basketball

Hi guys, it's your captain Travis here, I just finished classes for the day and am getting ready to head down to the gym for practice. Caltech has the hours of 4 to 6 PM set aside for athletics and other extracurriculars so my daily schedule is pretty regular. Our team this year consists of 6 seniors, 3 juniors, 2 sophomores and 5 freshman so we are pretty well rounded. The freshmen are learning the ropes fast and the returning players are adapting to a new offense under Coach Eslinger.  Over the summer I was privileged to be on the selection committee that hired Coach Eslinger.  He was one of over 100 well qualified candidates, but by coming from MIT, his existing understanding of the culture here at Caltech made him ready to hit the ground running with our team. We're looking for Matt and Wei to share point guard duties this year, with a rotation of me, Ryan, and Christian down in the post blocks. I am excited about this year's team because I believe we can really be competitive in our conference. We have one of the best shooting teams Caltech has ever seen, and if we can put together a tight defense we will really be able to give teams a run for their money. So, what does it take to play basketball for Caltech?

Just as with any other sport at Caltech, the number one qualification a player must have is dedication. On the basketball team we demand every player to respect each other player and the program by coming to the court ready to compete every day. It can certainly be challenging at times when there have been long problem sets the night before, or class all morning and afternoon, but it is rewarding to follow through on your commitment. We always love when players come to Caltech with high school basketball experience, but the fact of the matter is that less than half of our team played varsity basketball in high school. Some have said that our team embodies the ideals of amateur athletics in its purest form, which is certainly true given that no Caltech basketball player in recent history has gone on to play professional basketball. We are nerds who love to play basketball, and are proud of it. We make three-pointers, get fast breaks, block shots, and even dunk the ball from time to time, but in the end, the experience of playing competitive NCAA basketball is more important to any of us then what number comes up in the win column at the end of the season.