Dusty May's Final Four Diary: It's time for Florida Atlantic to play SDSU in NCAA semifinal
Editor’s note: As Florida Atlantic heads to Houston for the Final Four, coach Dusty May is keeping a blog and sharing it this week in collaboration with retired Bloomington, Indiana, Herald-Times sports writer Lynn Houser, who covered May when he played high school basketball and now lives in Delray Beach. In this third installment, May writes about gameday preparations and the Owls' attitude with tip-off hours away.
HOUSTON — Saturday is here and it is officially gameday morning. We had an efficient, one-hour closed practice from 9:15 – 10:15 a.m. Our guys, as always, are starting to get more and more focused on the task at hand as we approach tip-off.
We will have our pre-game meal at 1:30 p.m., and we will head to NRG at 3 p.m. for our 5:09 (Central Time) tip. We will be ready to go.
Friday, we had our normal team breakfast followed by film before heading to NRG Stadium for our open practice. The energy in the stadium was substantial, and this was just to watch the four teams practice! After more media it was back to the hotel to hold a walk-through with our scout team. Instead of a regular practice we decided to have a walk-through at an off-site gym to allow our guys more time to rest and be off their feet.
Our incredible managerial staff taped down a basketball court in a giant ballroom and for 25 minutes or so we covered SDSU and our scouting tactics.
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One of the many things that makes this team so special is the energy that our players have, even in a walk-through. For those who don’t know, walk-throughs in hotel ballrooms usually mean barefooted players sleepily walking through on a carpet floor, but not these guys. Our players do drop their sneakers but have such an intense approach!
Our walk-through today was filled with energy as we had extremely loud communication for the full 25 minutes. I apologize to any hotel guests that we may have woken up or disturbed from this 25-minute scouting session. The day ended with dinner, film, and hanging out in the players suite.
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The guys have been off their feet and should be well rested.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: FAU basketball, Dusty May ready to play San Diego State in Final Four
