March 28, 2024

Crowd Control

We all walk in to the B-DAC on Friday or Saturday nights, expecting to see our elite basketball team win every time. Seems like we haven’t lost at home since the beginning of the year. What is it about the home advantage that makes it so special? Maybe the team feels more comfortable, maybe there shoes are used to the hard wood floor. It could be the student section…or maybe what is right next to it.

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This archived article was written by: Trenton Kinney

We all walk in to the B-DAC on Friday or Saturday nights, expecting to see our elite basketball team win every time. Seems like we haven’t lost at home since the beginning of the year. What is it about the home advantage that makes it so special? Maybe the team feels more comfortable, maybe there shoes are used to the hard wood floor. It could be the student section…or maybe what is right next to it.
This whole season the baseball team has gone to every home basketball game, to yell as loud as possible and say the nastiest things to get into the opponents head. Isn’t that the goal, to get the other team thinking about something other than the game that they are in? We’re willing to do nearly anything to give our guys the upper hand. Now I’m not saying were better than the scream team, we just have different techniques.
The scream teams goal is to yell as loud as they can, which is good. But sometimes I have the feeling they don’t know why the are yelling. I feel like instead of yelling something about the game they should be yelling “I don’t know what we’re yelling about!” like Brick in Anchorman. They have the shirts, the paint and the noise makers but what they don’t have is basketball smarts. This is where the baseball team and even volleyball team come into play. We are the ones who are ruthless and get to know other players on the opposing team to shoot down their confidence with rude remarks.
The baseball and volleyball team sit at the end where the opponents will be trying to score at in the second half of the game. That’s no coincidence, we know we can get in their heads like no other. One of the baseball team’s leaders for our section is Matt Gochis who said, “my goal is to get inside the other team’s head and do all I can to take their mind off the game.” It’s true. Matt later told me he didn’t want to establish himself with the scream team, because when we were playing the Utah Stars team the point guard came up to our group and told us how clever we were. The point guard later told us the other part of the crowd was just ridiculous (Scream Team). The sad thing is we all are wanting the same thing, a victory for our team. At least we are similar in one way.
When I asked star player Brady Hurst what the baseball team does for the basketball team he said, “well it was everyone not just them! But the baseball team was huge because they knew how to get in out opponent’s heads and once they did that, they were a non factor the rest the game!” Brady is right. I’ll give a ton of credit to the ruthless fans because I am one. But it’s not just us that make that gym rock. We make it rock with the help of the Scream Team, life time fans, old alumni, and other students. We try our best to make it the hardest place to play in the conference but we cant do it by ourselves. With everyone doing there part to pump up the team, there is no doubt in my mind that has helped our team to a great season. Maybe next year we the scream team and the ruthless fans can join together. Then they can yell what we yell, which sometimes would make the parents at the game put ear muffs on their kids. Like i said we do anything to get in the other teams heads. We do our job. Go Eagles.