Humboldt State’s men have set south to the greater Los Angeles area to tip off the 2021-2022 basketball season.
The team will open its season at the CSU Dominguez Hills Torodome in Carson with two games in the CCAA/GNAC Challenge. Friday action is scheduled against Western Washington University and Saturday play will see the Lumberjacks take on Simon Fraser University.
Head coach Tae Norwood shared the weekend has been one the team has waited for a long time.
“Everybody is excited to get those guys on the court playing against somebody else. I know they’re all tired of beating up on each other,” the coach quipped.
More specifically, the two games will allow Norwood to see how the team fares in official competition against regionally ranked squads after missing a full season in the 2020-2021 school year.
“It’s going to be good to be battle tested early, we get to see where we stand,” he said. “We have a really good Western Washington team that was in the NCAA tournament and a good Simon Fraser team that is mostly back from last year.”
While the two games are outside part of the team’s conference schedule, they carry weight in the end-of-season regional rankings.
Humboldt State’s men will open at home with a non-conference duel against Lincoln University, coached by all-time NBA great and hall of famer Gary Payton, on Saturday, Nov. 20 at 7 p.m.
HSU’s home stand will continue with games against Western Oregon and PacWest member Dominican University in non-conference play at the Arcata campus’ Lumberjack Arena on Nov. 23 and Nov. 27 respectively.
Heading into the season start, Norwood says his message to the players on and off the court remains the same.
“It’s a one-game tournament within ourselves. There’s no one game that’s more important than another. We’re trying to win one game at a time and put together a string of wins so hopefully at the end of the season our resume is good enough to get an automatic bid into the NCAA tournament. There’s a number of different ways you can do that, one is by winning the conference tournament and the other is by putting together just a really good list of quality wins,” the coach elaborated.
While the team did not play a full season last school year, Norwood believes the nine games the team played this Spring were huge in setting up for this full season. HSU played all nine games on the road, to a 4-5 record.
“What that did was really allow us to implement a system and have that system be battle-tested. It was great information for myself and the staff to see what the guys can do, what the roles will be and what they can do,” Norwood explained.
The team will commence its CCAA conference calendar on Dec. 2 against San Francisco State at the Lumberjack Arena. Tip-off is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. following the end of the women’s game between the two schools’ teams.
Mario Cortez can be reached at 707-441-0526.
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