Jan. 7, 2007
As part of the year-long Bronco Blog feature presented here on SantaClaraBroncos.com, senior point guard Ashley Graham will be checking in on a weekly basis during the conference season with the goings-on of the defending WCC regular-season champion Santa Clara Women's Basketball team.
Graham, a senior from Redmond, Wash., has established herself as one of the top otuside shooters in SCU basketball history in her four years on the Mission Campus. While she is currently among the WCC leaders in scoring (10.7 ppg), three-point shooting percentage (37.0%), and assists (4.96 apg), she is also among the all-time SCU career leaders with a 42.7% three-point shooting percentage (second all-time), 198 three-pointers (second all-time), and as of Feb. 12, has scored 969 career points, leaving her only 31 away from becoming the 16th member of the "1,000-Point Club." This season, Graham will look to help the Broncos to their second straight WCC title and a trip to the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three years.
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Posted: Jan. 28, 2007
Easy To Entertain!
Hello Bronco fans!! Recently, we returned home from a trip down south playing Pepperdine and LMU. For most trips during conference, we leave on a Wednesday afternoon and don't return home until Saturday night. Although we all hate missing classes, the traveling provides some free time to catch up on homework. Sometimes, the class missing thing can be really tough however. This last trip, many members of the team had to email professors at specific (early morning) times with various assignments, papers, and worksheets. Yas is the most likely Bronco that you will find doing homework on trips. It seems she has an endless schedule of due dates- maybe that's why she is so smart!!! Besides doing homework, we pretty much do three other things- eat, sleep, and play- literally. Our entire day is scheduled around when we eat and practice. If we have an afternoon practice, we'll wake up, eat, go to practice, eat, watch film, eat...you get the picture. The funny thing is that we continually stuff our faces at each restaurant. Luckily, our coaches know where to find the best food; restaurants we frequent include CPK, Outback, (me and Tracey's favorite), and Applebee's. Once we return from a road trip, most of us don't need to eat for an entire week after!!
As for the rest of our time during road trips, our team has found various ways to entertain ourselves. It is rare to find a quiet bus ride on a road trip unless were on the way to a game. Usually, we fill our time with different games of some sort. One game we invented earlier this year- Do You Know What I Know?- kept us entertained for a two hour drive. Basically, we all crowd the back of the bus and any random fact that we know the answer to, we ask the rest of the team. For instance, Claire asked the rest of us- what are the "Seven Wonders of the World"? Tough question. As a team, we could only come up with four of the seven. Another game we enjoy is Hoggie Poggie. We sit in a circle and pick a category- say, cereal types- and on every clap, each successive person has to name a cereal. Its actually much harder and intense than it may sound. If all you had in mind was Cheerios, and the person before you says that, you have about half a second to think of another. Categories can vary also- anything from types of fruits, to players in the WCC. Our favorite game to play in our free time this past road trip we also invented. Lauren had a dispute with Jen over who was the least "preppy". Because they couldn't settle it themselves, our entire team had to join and make a game out of it. As a team, we had to rate who was least-to-most preppy. Needless to say, Lauren was more preppy than Jen, and Tracey took the cake as being the LEAST preppy. Congratulations T-Dub!!! We continued the game by developing other categories and ranked everybody according to those. As you can see, we are pretty desperate for entertainment. However, we never cease to find something exciting.
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Posted: Jan. 7, 2007
Winter Break Adventures With the Women's Basketball Team
Hello Bronco fans!! A new year brings a new blog entry to the Santa Clara Broncos website. Bear with me as I attempt to provide insight as to what makes the Women's basketball team click. Luckily I'M writing the blog so I am free to divulge secrets about my teammates and they can't tell you anything about me!! Let me start with a brief overview of our team. The best thing about us is definitely our closeness. Nearly our entire team lives with at least one other teammate...as if we didn't get enough of each other practicing everyday and traveling together!! Those who do not live with a teammate can still often be found at the houses of one of their teammates.
With break coming to a close, our team bonding time has been quite extensive as of late. With most other students gone, we were forced to entertain ourselves. Now, what did the women's basketball team enjoy doing off the court over winter break? Thanks for asking!! For starters, Sara and Chandice decided to make a new addition to our team. They adopted a tiny, fluffy, grey and white kitten that they named Azlan. While some of our teammates do not appreciate kittens as much as I do, (how could anyone dislike such a cute, cuddly creature?!) Azlan is an accepted member of our Bronco family. He accompanies Sara and Chandice wherever they may go except of course for the locker room.
While playing with Azlan has been my favorite past time over break, many other teammates have turned to the television for entertainment. Kasey made quite a purchase over break, buying the ENTIRE Friends DVD collection. Yes, ten complete seasons of Rachel, Monica, Ross, Joey, and Chandler! Many of our team members such as Anna or Jen (and occasionally myself) joined Kasey in the Friends excitement. Our other favorite show of the break is most certainly Grey's Anatomy. Now, I don't mean to be advertising for ABC, but this show has pretty much dominated most of our off the court hours. I think its because we are all so smart and can see ourselves as top-notch surgeons. Some of us (such as Jen) also enjoy the romantic side of Grey's as well.
As if watching T.V. wasn't enough, we also got some big screen entertainment; our entire team, coaches included, went to see The Pursuit of Happyness. The movie was very inspiring, and almost brought tears to Lauren and Tracey's eyes countless times.
In addition to watching T.V. and seeing movies, some team members found other uses of their time. Claire Goins and Liz Doran actually went swimming in the Malley pool a few days ago. Yes- it was January, and yes- it was freezing!! They are a crazy pair! Ashley Gonnerman (who we call Gonny) did some arts and crafts, while our team artist Yasemin focused some of her extra energy on drawing and reading. We also almost had to do some ghost hunting as our two freshman, Maggie and Brittany, heard scary noises outside their temporary dorm room. Luckily, we figured out that the loud squeaking sound was only the Caltrain. Finally, Kimmie unfortunately just got out of surgery a few days ago. However, it is definitely for the best, and she is already feeling much better.
Well, I think that covers just about all of us, and our winter break excitement. Were getting ready for Conference play and are pumped to start off against St. Mary's on Sunday. Thanks for reading, and come back soon for a Women's basketball update!!