Marc's January Blog Entries
Marc's Blog - January 24, 2008
Sorry for the lull in the updates…The first three weeks of this semester have just flown by. Speaking of school, I just wanted to give our team props for having a 3.1 grade-point average last semester. That is a great accomplishment for a team with 14 guys. I also want to congratulate Eric Parker and my brother, Dan, for both making the Dean's List along with myself.
Since my last update, we have gone 3-2 to move our record to 9-8. We are just staying above .500 by the skin of our teeth. The most disappointing part of this is that we have now lost three conference games at home. After beating Anderson at home the first game after Christmas break, we got outplayed by both Bluffton and Rose-Hulman at home. After leading the entire game against Rose, we found ourselves on the defensive end with 16 seconds remaining and the scored tied at 71. We made three straight stops, but each time the ball went out underneath their basket and Rose retained possession. Their last inbounds play ended up being the deciding factor; they inbounded the ball, which got tipped and rolled along the baseline until one of their players picked it up and passed it to my man, who threw up a fading shot. Luckily, the shot was an airball, but one of their players was in the right position and tipped it in right as the shot-clock buzzer went off. We advanced the ball and had a good look for the win, but it ended up getting blocked as the horn sounded.
While our home conference record has been dismal, the thing that has kept us optimistic is our undefeated road record in the conference (4-0). We won at Transylvania last Wednesday, and pulled out a huge win against our traditional rival Franklin last night. We were tied in the conference standings with each team going into the games and the wins have definitely helped us. The past two seasons we have come out at Franklin and got behind big from the start. We wanted to make sure that wasn't the case last night and we ended up being the team up big in the first half and held the lead the entire game. It was a great feeling to beat our rival in their gym my senior year.
Outside of basketball, I have just been trying to enjoy my last semester at Hanover. My roommates and I have a projector and large movie screen in our apartment, which makes it nice to watch movies and sporting events. One of those sporting events was the Colts game a couple of weekends ago; I was disappointed to see the Colts go out of the playoffs so early, but I'm sure they'll be back strong next year. One of my roommates, Chris Walsh, has started a Social Justice Movie Night in our apartment, where we show a movie that helps create awareness for different social problems both nationally and globally. This is every Thursday night at 7, so if anyone is looking for something to do stop by; we have a great list of movies, including Crash, American History X, Hotel Rwanda and Borat.
Intramural basketball is in full swing right now and I have spent a lot of time at the gym watching some of the games, which are always fun to watch. And if none of these things sound interesting to you, check out this list of 160 other things to do at Hanover: 160 Things to Do (PDF). There is sure to be something for everyone.
Finally, I just wanted to thank everyone again who has been keeping up with my blog. It has been amazing how many people have said something to me about it, and I really appreciate it. I know Larry Duke, our play-by-play radio announcer, has mentioned my blog on the air a couple of times, so for those of you who are just now reading, welcome.
Well we will try to continue our road winning streak against first-place Defiance Saturday. They beat us handily at home in December, so we need to take a home game from them. Talk to you soon…
Marc's Blog - January 10, 2008 
First off, I hope everyone had a great Christmas break. I don't know about anyone else, but mine seemed to fly by.
On the basketball side, the past month has been a disappointment. After starting the season 6-1, we have now lost five straight games to move our record to 6-6. This is the longest losing streak I have been through in my entire playing career, as is probably the case for most of our guys. As I mentioned in my last post, we had the chance to play Division I Evansville in our first game of the break. It was an awesome experience, and even though we ended up getting beat by 13, I thought we played hard and competed with them throughout the game. In fact, we were beating them with just over two minutes to go in the first half. I had a couple of friends tell me the next day that they saw "Hanover" scroll across the bottom line of ESPN during Sportscenter that night which was pretty cool.
A few nights later, we traveled to Illinois Wesleyan. Despite scoring 76 points, our second highest scoring output of the season to that point, we still got beat. We were able to return home after the game for a week off and losing was definitely not the way that we wanted to start that break. On a side note, I want to thank all of my roommates for making the trek to Illinois Wesleyan to watch us play.
After a week at home, we returned early, Dec. 26, for a few practices before the Otternbein Tournament. While we came into that tournament with expectations of competing for a championship, we did not play up to those expectations. Just as at Illinois Wesleyan, we could not get stops on defense in either game and fouled way too much. We had numerous chances to win both games, but could not pull them out in the end.
While we did have basketball for a majority of the break, I was able to spend quite a bit of time at home with my family. Christmas is always one of my favorite times of the year because of the family time. From "Christmas Eve Eve" as we call it, all the way through Christmas night, I spend nearly every waking hour with my extended family. From playing cards and eating great food all Christmas Eve at my grandparents, to waking up early with my brothers at my house Christmas day to see what surprises we had in our stockings, to playing cornhole and the Nintendo Wii with the entire family at my other grandparents, it was definitely a memorable Christmas.
We also had a few days off from basketball over New Years. I had no extraordinary plans for New Year's Eve and decided to hang out around home with my family. My girlfriend, Amy, came to Terre Haute as well, and my best friend from home, Augie, came over to celebrate with us. We had a lot of fun playing some board games and just hanging out.
Well I have a lot more little stories from break, but I won't bore you with them. Classes started Monday and this is my last full semester at Hanover. I cannot believe it. These past four years have flown by. And I think I officially have the best class schedule possible; I only have classes for a few hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with Tuesdays and Thursdays completely off.
We host Anderson tonight in our first game since classes resumed. It's about time that we got back on the winning track…