Monday Morning Quarterback: HCCC Men's Basketball

    How do you measure a team's success? Well when your college has the nickname, "Home of Champions" it becomes apparent there's only one way to measure. For many teams improving year in and year out is usually the standard. And for Herkimer that's the case but improvement for them is winning championships but this year they came up just short.

            Coach Matt Lee says, "You know it's disappointing because our goal is to get the national tournament and win a national championship and not getting out of our region is very disappointing but it's a one game tournament. You play bad on the wrong day and bad things happen but I'm proud of the guys for the season."

            And coach lee has a lot to be proud of, the generals finished with a 29 and 2 record and freshman guard Demetrius Mitchell says a lot of the success they found was outside of the games. Mitchell added, "Staying focused on the books because without the books you can't really play so you gotta stay focused. And not so much of downgrading one another but every time you see somebody down just pick them back up."

            The Generals had talent in spades so one of their biggest challenges was mental toughness. "When you're more talented than the other team, it's really not as many X's and O's, it's more of being mentally prepared, umm being positive and how to deal with adversity. When the talent is spread out and you're evenly matched with the other opponent then it's more of X's and O's."

            Herkimer was bounced from the regional tournament by the only team to beat them all year, SUNY Delhi. Mitchell says, "Very bitter taste because like, that's like.... In the back of my mind I was in the back of the locker room taking my uniform off, I was thinking just Delhi. Just can't wait to play against Delhi next year because I know we're going to get them back."