The ESU men’s basketball team started its Tuesday at 6 a.m. leaving Portales, N.M., and embarking on a 12-hour bus ride. They arrived in Emporia at 6:10 p.m. and went straight to practice.
No time for rest.
The Hornets’ reward for a season-opening victory at Eastern New Mexico on Monday night is another away game today at Kansas State. When coach David Moe made his early-season schedule, he let the Division I Kansas schools decide when they wanted to play the Hornets.
They didn’t do them any favors. Last week Emporia State followed an exhibition loss on Monday at Wichita State with another game on Tuesday at Kansas. This time they at least have a day’s rest. Of course, that day was spent on a bus and the practice floor.
As the sleepy-eyed Hornets rolled off the bus on Tuesday night, junior guard Jeremiah Box was asked how his legs were feeling.
“Right now they’re kind of beat up, but I’ll have to get them ready for tomorrow,” said Box, who scored 28 points in ESU’s 87-55 win on Monday night. “When game time comes they’ll be ready, but right now they’re feeling like they just want to go to sleep.”
Really though, this is a player’s dream.
“It doesn’t really matter to me. I enjoy playing basketball. Games are great. Practice...” Robert Moores stopped mid-sentence and laughed. “But games, I love games.”
Moe, who made the schedule, has been the one most concerned with Emporia State’s early-season schedule. He did not like getting blown out at Kansas, but he said he’s more concerned with the results of the Hornets’ games against Division II schools, like this Saturday at Newman, than he is against the D-1 Kansas schools.
“I learned during the KU game there were some things we didn’t do because I felt like we were tired after Wichita State,” Moe said. “Things that we needed to do, not so we could beat Kansas, but so we could have an opportunity to represent ourselves better.
It’s going to be hard enough doing this thing the way we’ve done it, just to have a chance to be close to what we feel like we are based on the scheduling aspect of it all.”
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