Monday Block 3

Monday Block 3

>> we just spoke with earl grant, head of men's basketball at college of charleston.

With sports back under full swing as much as possible with limited conditions and fans do what they do best.

And joining us from the women's team, robin harmony and congratulations on a new season.

>> thanks, good to see you.

>> teams are preparing for the opening games of the 2021 season, and it must be a good feeling for you.

>> yeah, we're excited to get back in the gym.

And only, we have been practicing for a month or so, and it's great to get back and feel normal.

You know, they practice now with no scrimmage games, because with covid, he eliminated two scrimmage games for when we tip it up.

And since we can't do that, we'll start november 25th and get at it and try to get better every single day.

I know our players are tired of playing each other, but this is part of it.

And it's the worst stretch.

And now the fun time comes when they get to play games.

>> it seems that this process, living through a pandemic has forced your players to grow up faster and also be accountable for safety of not just yourself.

But the players who are on your own team and who you end up playing with when you go to games.

>> absolutely, and it's a sacrifice that they have to do, where we live in beautiful charleston and there are so many things to do by going to king street and dinner, and our players now, they have to come and do online classes, come to practice, go back to their dorm room, which is an apartment and cook, and not be out and socialize, but they have to be with their team members and social distance and mask, and it's like a game of roulette.

If one gets it, we could all take it home to our families.

>> your colleague, earl said exactly the same thing, but as they get older, that responsibility is only going to increase.

So it's good to get it figured out now before they're out in the real world, so to speak.

Let's talk about how you ended the last season, a short ever season and were you happy with your performance?

>> i would have been happy if it was a day earlier.

We ended up losing and we finished 13 and 16.

And it would have been nice not to play that game if you didn't have to end on a losing season.

But we know what is in store for us, and we took over the position that they only won seven games before us, and there was not a lot of winning.

And i didn't realize it until after we had two big wins, the first two games in our performance, we played drexel, james madison, we upset them at home and then the next game, we played basketball here.

And we had a perfect game of basketball.

The kids played well and i thought okay, we have something going on here, and after we won, the kids are like we won.

Wait a minute, they didn't know what it felt like to win or lose, and it had to be a celebration.

You enjoy it.

They were so used to getting beat up, they didn't know how to handle a w.

It was the same to them.

And it's a learning experience for all of us, but we are just happy that we had a decent first year, where we at least won 13 fames and doubled our conference wins, and doubled our wins for non-conference as well.

So you have to see improvement.

The kids are already prone and we have to teach them how to win and compete.

I think that the kids figure that out and we didn't win as many games as the coaches would like us to win.

We're successful and trust me, you're 108% better.

>> i'm glad that you pointed it out because in the second season as the head coaches, the cougars doubled their overall win to 13, and the victory to 6, so congratulating on that, so specking of those ws that you put under your belt.

>> in the conference, we moved up two slots w.

We have a really young team still.

And now i have two freshmen in the starting lineup and we signed six players and we're still pretty young, and now we know that we have the depth.

And for us, part of having a young team, how are your players going to act?

>> right out of the gate, number one in south carolina.

>> we don't mind, we're playing the number-one team in the nation, and it is good to have our kids playing.

When we come home on the 29th to get a w.

>> we're all going to be rooting for you, it's going to be exciting to see everybody back out there on the court.

>> we look forward to it.

We can't wait until it gets here and we have some games.

>> best of luck and thank you so