Published: January 10, 2008 04:09 pm      

BLOGGIN' IN THE PAINT: NU star focuses on hoops amid personal losses

Jan. 10

Hey everyone, this is Charron, finally returning to blog. I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a great New Year’s. Everything has been good for me on the court, and average at best personally.

I lost a cousin and an uncle this break, which hit me pretty hard and forced me to take some time away from blogging. My success on the court has kept me going and I feel that I have been playing pretty well which I contribute to the fact that I have refocused my attitude and have been playing with my late family members on my mind. I am back to blogging though, and ready to start the New Year.

Basketball has been going extremely well these last few weeks. As many of you may know, I have moved up on the points per game list, and am now leading the country in scoring. This is both good, for obvious reasons, and bad as well. Now that I am the leading scorer, I am getting a lot more attention on the court. I am seeing a lot of tougher defenses and teams are really focusing more on me. Because of this though, our opponents are forcing the rest of my team to beat them, which really has brought out the best in my teammates.

We are on a nice winning streak right now and the team and I are very focused on keeping it alive. We thought before that we were struggling on the road but then we pulled together and got a really good Big East win against St. John’s earlier this season. Our young guys are playing with so much confidence and it is really benefiting the whole team. Since that crucial win we have won two more non-conference contests and two big MAAC road games.

Our focus now includes the preseason pick to win the conference, Siena. This game will be sort of a rematch of the MAAC Championship last year. I am looking forward to playing these games; they would be great wins for the team.

We had a great trip on the West Coast. It was a lot of fun, and winning the Cable Car Classic championship made it even better. We really came together as a team on the road. I won’t get into too much detail about it though because my roommate, Daniel O’Brien, had the task of blogging about that trip, which you can read at purpleeagles.com. Tyrone came alive this trip which is great because we definitely succeed more when he is on his game. He joined me on the all-tournament team along with three other guys from the other teams that we played.

After winning the championship we stayed an extra day and went on a nice tour of San Francisco. We got to visit Alcatraz, which was a lot of fun. We all learned a lot on the tour. We also visited Pier 39, which is a big strip of San Francisco. As a team we just walked around, shopped, and grabbed some food. On our way back to our hotel we also saw the Golden Gate Bridge. Being on West Coast time really had us all exhausted by then and we headed for the airport and our late night red-eye flight back home.

Well that should catch you up to the present and I’ll definitely be back to blogging on a more regular basis as our season kicks into high gear. Thank you for sticking around during my brief time off, I missed writing. I will be talking to you again soon hopefully after two more wins. Don’t forget to tune into our games this weekend. Go Purple Eagles!

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Dec. 6

Hey what’s up? It’s me again. It has been a little while since I have written. This has been a tough week for us with all of our papers and finals going on. Basketball has been our break from classes and projects and it has been quite a week on the court as well. As you may remember, we won a tough, Little Three rival game vs. St. Bonaventure last Wednesday and then took a long trip down to play Liberty in Lynchburg, Va.

Last Wednesday was a very fun day all around. Its fun going to class hearing all the teachers and students talk about the game. It’s cool to hear them ask if we will win, or how we think the game will go. I think that it’s great that our whole school takes such an interest in our program. It gets me really excited for the games. I definitely did not play my best, and the game was a lot closer that we wanted it to be, but we sort of expected them to go out and play their hardest because of the rival. Fortunately for us we had a great second half and pulled out the win, keeping us unbeaten at home.

The trip to Liberty however, was not as successful. It may have been the worst trip that I have ever been on in my life! Friday morning we had practice as usual, rounded up our stuff and then boarded the bus for the Buffalo airport. From there we took a connecting flight to Philly, then a flight into Richmond, Va. and then a two-hour bus ride to Lynchburg. We ended up finally getting to our destination around 9 p.m. We watched some game tape, went over our scouting reports and finally, after that long day, got to bed around midnight. We had a rough game verses Liberty and it didn’t start off as well as we would have liked which really hurt us in the end. Right after it ended we boarded the bus and drove back to Richmond so that we would be closer to the airport in the morning. After such a hard game we all hoped that getting home would be easy and we could rest up and do what we needed to get done for this last week of classes. We were wrong. Flying out of Richmond we were OK, but when we got to Philly there was something wrong with our plane, which pushed our flight back. We were supposed to get home around 12:30, but did not arrive back to the Gallagher Center until 5 p.m. Most of us just went back to our dorms to do work. It was another exhausting day.

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Dec. 1

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Charron again, fresh back from our first road trip of the season against Duquesne. It has been a good couple of days off of school for the Thanksgiving holiday, which my team and I spent at Coach Mihalich’s house where his wife cooked us a great meal. Friday morning though, it was back to practice and then right after that, we loaded the bus and headed down Duquesne, in Pittsburgh. This is what we typically do the day before a road game, another one of our traditions. The bus ride was pretty good, mostly because it was only a few hours long. We watched some game film and then got to sleep until we reached our destination. We got there around 8 o’clock and went to a very good pasta place for a late dinner as a team. Once we got into our hotel, we checked in and then had a little meeting to go over some more game tape and scouting reports. After that we all headed to bed.

Saturday we woke up around 10 and had breakfast and another meeting before heading back to our rooms to get ready for the game. One thing that I always do is iron my uniform and warm up my upper body before every game. Once we were all ready we headed over to the Palumbo Center for shoot around and warm up.

As you may know we lost our first game of the season, 76-65. The guys played really hard, but we could not pull ahead at the end of the game to a very good team. I am proud of the way our young guys handled themselves on the road. We learned a lot about our team from this game and we have a lot to build on now. I don’t think that I played my best, but now I know things that I can improve on to better help my team win.

After a loss, the ride back home is never fun. Stanley Hodge and I stayed awake and watched the film from the game and saw a lot of the mistakes that we made, and things that we need to improve on. Most of the rest of the team slept the whole way back because it’s sort of an unwritten rule that you can’t be up talking, joking around and having fun after a loss. I was again really impressed with my team. No one said that they did well, or that they did this and that or blamed the loss on anyone else. Everyone took the blame for their own mistakes and were very eager to return to practice to make it better. The whole team is really excited about our game on Wednesday against St. Bonaventure. It should be another good matchup.

Coach gave us the day off on Sunday to rest up for another hard week. Most of the guys just chilled all day and relaxed. I finally got to sleep in and I did until noon. I relaxed for most of the day until later on. I watched some more game film and then went to the gym and got some shots up. All in all, it was a good day, though I am eager to get back to practice to prepare for our next game. Hope to see you all there!

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Nov. 22

Hey, it’s Charron again. This has been an amazing week! First off my women’s home opener project was one of the highlights of the last few days. My group and I created one of the biggest crowds that has ever been to a women’s basketball game that I’ve seen since I’ve been here. To top it off, the women’s team won the game. It was a very nice event. My teammates and I met with all our season ticket holders beforehand, and there were also a bunch of piñatas for N-Zone members and children after the game.

This week was also my birthday week. My birthday, which is Nov. 15, was right before our home opener. I had a pretty great day, we went to church and out to dinner as a team, our annual tip-off traditions. I always go to church when I am home. I am a member of Victory Temple Church in Camden, N.J., pastored by Dr. Giddins Sr. It is very important to me to attend each week with my family. I think that was a great way to start our season off.

Our home opener was a great night. Our fans were at the top of their game and the Dayton Band was just amazing; there was no way we could have lost with the crowd we had on Friday night. The Gallagher Center was sold out with a record 650 students in attendance. We feel we have the best fans in the country, and call our N-Zone and fans our 6th man.

I don’t feel like I played my best game, but I was very impressed with my teammates and the way that they played. Probably the best thing that happened was that I scored my 1,000th point, which made the night even better. I am happy that my mom, aunt, and two of my best friends were there to see it. All in all, it has been a great week. I’ll write again soon.

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Nov. 15

Hey, I'm Charron Fisher, starting forward for the Niagara University’s men’s basketball team. This is my final year as a Purple Eagle and I am very excited for the season to begin. I am new to blogging, but when approached to start one, I thought it would be a great idea.

This past Tuesday, as a part of my sports marketing class, I worked the women’s basketball home opener. This is a class project where different groups of people in the class were put in charge of selling the tickets and dealing with game day promotions for the men’s and women’s basketball and hockey home openers. The men’s basketball team is very involved with helping the women’s team throughout the year and we will all be involved in the home opener. As a team, we held a banquet for our season ticket holders before the women’s home opener to thank them for buying season tickets, as well as try to get them to attend more of the women’s games.

Along with the women’s game, my team and I have been preparing for our first home game of the season, as we open with Central Michigan on Friday. This week of practice was pretty good. We had Monday off, but we have been preparing for Central Michigan since Tuesday. We beat them just before Christmas last year, and I know that this will be another exciting match up between the teams this time around. We are prepared and I have complete confidence in my team.

Outside of practice and class I am enjoying the remainder of my senior year at NU. A little about me that people might not know is that I am the only player that does not room with another player from my team. My roommate is Danny O’Brien, one of our managers, and one of my best friends. We are also the only two members of the team with digital cable and HBO On-Demand on our TVs, which is pretty cool to be able to have while living in the dorms. And it gets the team together to watch some of the college basketball games that come on ESPNU throughout the week.

A lot of people ask me about my game day superstitions.

A little one that I have is that I won’t play PlayStation 3 the day of a game. I developed that superstition after we lost a game once when I had been playing video games earlier that day. So now I just don’t play anymore on game day.

This is all for now. Check out my blogs at www.niagara-gazette.com throughout the season.

Niagara University senior Charron Fisher was a preseason all-Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference selection and enters the season with 999 career points.