Blowing whistles.
Bouncing balls.
Squeaking shoes.
It all sounds like one thing: Basketball season is close.
Just less than a month before the tipoff of the Fort Lewis College men’s basketball season, the Skyhawks were hard at work Saturday inside Whalen Gymnasium. They played an intrasquad scrimmage at noon before playing an impromptu alumni scrimmage.
It was a game FLC head coach Bob Hofman was hesitant to agree to, but DeAndre Lansdowne, the program’s all-time leading scorer, was able to convince his old head coach to let the alumni get on the floor on homecoming weekend.
“It took us all week to convince coach to play against us, but it was good,” Lansdowne said. “It was just playing hard, having fun and giving it your all out there. It’s Fort Lewis basketball, and we’re all the same team.”
Hofman said he is reluctant to play alumni games out of fear of unnecessary injury risk. But it was Hofman who wanted the game to go an extra 2 minutes, after the alumni beat the current players 52-48 in two 15-minute halves.
“I just think it can be easy to get somebody hurt, but this was a great day and a lot of fun,” Hofman said. “Everyone of the guys that came back to this one has been a champion, and they still play like champions.”
Lansdowne threw down a vintage dunk in the first half of the game, rising up and throwing down a one-handed slam. It was one of many highlight plays out of the alumni team, which was full of players from the 2008-2012 era.
“I was trying to get a hard one in just to, you know, see what it felt like, and it was a good feeling,” Lansdowne said of the dunk. “Let people know I still have a little bit in me.”
David Kanyinda was dishing out assists, Matt Morris, also a Durango High School alumnus, celebrated a few sweet shots, and Matt Billups brought the same intensity to the floor he brought for three seasons to the Skyhawks. Torrey Udall was in the mix, and Josh Cassady hit a few big 3-point baskets down the stretch to help the alumni claim the win.
Ryan Brooks, an FLC junior out of Ignacio, was the leading scorer for the current Skyhawks team. The current players rotated in every player with several true freshmen seeing big minutes in a lesson of what the FLC basketball tradition is all about.
“I was just trying to go out and play good and show the coaches I can play and do my thing,” said Brooks, an Ignacio High School alumnus. “It was fun out there, and it was fun playing against someone other than our own team.”
HHH
FLC graduated four players from last year’s team, but there are several more new pieces to the team this season. There are five new true freshmen, along with redshirt freshman Rasmus Bach, a 6-4 guard.
But the Skyhawks also have a fair share of experienced players, with two-time reigning Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year and second-team All-American Alex Herrera, another IHS product, set to lead the team as one of two seniors alongside Lucas Archuleta.
“Our focus is on getting better. We’ve got a long way to go, and this is still just our first official week of practice, and we’re nowhere close to our best,” Herrera said. “We’ll keep picking it up each day. We’re going to go out there and try to win the whole thing, but, if we want to win it, we have to come out and win each day, first.”
Hofman said the team hasn’t talked about the preseason poll picking the Skyhawks to finish in fourth in the conference. Right now, he’s just concerned about promoting the team chemistry.
“I feel like we’re a jigsaw puzzle that’s been thrown up in the air and hasn’t come down yet and settled to where the pieces are going to be,” Hofman said. “We have a lot of work to do, but it is a cohesive group, and I think as long as we develop good chemistry – which I think we will – and everyone can accept their roles, we have a chance to do well.”
jlivingston@durangoherald.com
