Bob Hofman would be happy if his squad showed its territorial imperative this weekend.
The longtime bench boss of the Fort Lewis College men’s basketball team used Robert Ardrey’s 1966 work, The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations, to illustrate his point. The basic gist of the work is that people naturally are territorial, with a need for their own personal space, their own home.
And FLC will try and defend said territory for the first time this weekend, when Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference play will open against UC-Colorado Springs on Friday and CSU-Pueblo on Saturday.
“Most species, the first thing they establish is their home – before mate, before food, just their home,” Hofman said. “And we need to establish that we can be really good at home, and we have no litmus test before league.”
The Skyhawks enter the weekend 3-1 after wins over Portland Bible College, Pacifica and Hawaii-Hilo and a loss in double overtime to Tiffin. NCAA rules allow a Division II institution to count a game against a non-Division II, four-year program as an exhibition provided it’s played after the first permissible date for practice, thus allowing FLC to count its loss to NAIA Northern New Mexico as an exhibition.
At this point in the season, FLC still is looking for a set rotation and a team identity, two things the Skyhawks will need to figure out quickly as the 22-game RMAC schedule gets underway. The long league schedule – of which Hofman has been one of the most vocal critics – and the upcoming holiday break turn the regular season into what Hofman calls three seasons – the nonconference, the pre-holiday RMAC slate and the post-holiday schedule.
The break essentially makes it hard to get into a set routine – practice four days a week, then two games – before January.
“The real routine doesn’t start until January, almost mid-January. So we just have to take it as it is ... and try to get the pace of the season,” Hofman said.
As far as an identity goes, senior guard Wes McKenzie has a few ideas about the look he’d like the Skyhawks to adopt.
“I think I’d like our identity to be toughness,” he said. “I think we could really make that happen. We’ve got some tough guys.”
The goal is, as always, to be peaking in February and March as the regular season draws to a close. But to get there, the kinks have to be worked out in November and December, and McKenzie said the five-game road swing to start the season helped FLC figure some things out about itself.
“We have to put together a full 40 minutes of basketball,” McKenzie said. “We’d have stretches where we played really well and had good energy, and at times, the energy would drop off substantially. So I think just being able to put together a full game and competing the entire time. ... A little early adversity in the season never is a terrible thing. I think we’ll learn from it.”
It also gave a glimpse into other areas of improvement. The Skyhawks are hitting at a pedestrian 64 percent from the foul line. And finding a consistent tertiary scoring threat alongside Alex Herrera and Nick Tomsick would help stretch defenses.
But it’s all part of the process at this point – adjusting, cajoling, tinkering and trying to win games until the pieces all start to fit into a basketball puzzle approaching perfection. It’s about continuing to get results as each piece finds its counterpart and locks in.
“We tinkered right up until mid-January (last year),” Hofman said. “We’ve had a lot of good things and a lot of things that we need to get really better at. We’ve been on the road so much that I’m not sure we’re as prepared as we should be going into league season.”
rowens@durangoherald.com
