Winning always belongs to the people who are prepared. That certainly applies to basketball games. If you practice hard, have good strategy and continue to the end, you are prepared and you get a very big chance to win.

On Jan. 31, UMPI’s Wieden gym was full of people even before the 4 p.m. start of the game the UMPI men and Central Maine Community College. The audience was waiting. The players were warming up on the court. Then the game started on time at 4 pm. The UMPI guys played with a very good strategy under their coach’s lead. The final score was 73 to 57. We won.

Nick Lenhard, number 7, is the captain of the team. He showed his leadership and made the team keep working until they won the tough game. He said: “I try to take a leadership role throughout the game, just try to make it easy for the guys. I’m satisfied with our performance today. I think we had a very good strategy going on. We are just kind of building our reason for success to keep continuing. My feeling right now is we are going in a positive direction. We tend to start winning across the season but I think it’s just because of our system, our coach. Our coach definitely plays a big part in it. I think we’re playing very well right now because of our coach.”

Coach Mike Holmes said: “Today’s performance was very strong, the offense we’re putting on the floor now. We want really good scoring but what we are looking for is: Are we getting good looks? Are we taking care of the ball? And we did it. Now when we are shooting well, our defense is pretty solid throughout the game. That was actually very prolific offense and we did a very good job on our top scorers and helped them check so I would say overall I think we’ve put together a very solid game.”

Women’s basketball coach Doug Carter was in the audience. He was very excited about the game. He said that the guys had a really good performance. “They work so hard and it would be very good to see their hard work pay off with a trip to the nationals. They represent so well. They are super young men. You know having a chance to work with them daily, to be around is so exciting to see them playing so well.”

The team members get much fan support. They are not alone. Let’s hope that they can go as far as they want.