The winter sports season is upon us here in Wyoming and now that enough practices have been reached inter-school competition can finally begin. The Braves opened their season with a tight loss but Coach Schwab saw some positives from the game, claiming that first game jitters were on full display from his team and stating “If we can be in a dog fight like that and never even get into our offense just imagine what we can be once we start running the offense properly”.

The Braves were bitten by 16 turnovers in the ball game against Laramie in a game that featured 15 lead changes and was a 1 possession game until a final few minutes push by Laramie helped make the score seem more decisive than perhaps the game truly was. Coach Schwab says that heading into the weekends tournament it was the little things he wanted to see improve as the weekend went on, apart from just simply wins, wanting to see the team showcase that they won’t back down and not forcing shots, just calming down and settling into the offense as the games go on.

The opening weekend of basketball being played in tournament format also led to the question of conditioning of all the athletes on the court for every team, “Fatigue was certainly a factor last night” Coach joked when asked about it, stating that even though the team has been hitting the conditioning and running at practice a heavy amount that players were still naturally getting tired as the game was going on being so early in the season.

The Braves also have one of the taller teams in the conference with a number of players being in the mid-6 foot range, Coach stated about how this effected his offensive scheme “adapt or die” basically insinuating that he wouldn’t be stubborn about his preference for his offense and would adapt his offense to suit the personnel. He also stated that because of the teams height it does alter his expectations for the play as well and tells his team easy buckets in the paint have to be automatic on offense and an absolute no-go on defense because if you have the significant height advantage you can’t afford to lose inside the paint.

The full interview can be heard below: