Texan football checks in... In their own words...

Here is what three of the Texan football players had to say about checking in at the 2010 Texan Fall Camp.

Jamaal Steamer



Nick Stephens



Jonathan Arnold

"Courtside" with Sonya Sundberg

Well if you weren’t at Saturday’s game, you missed a good one. We played Texas A&M Kingsville, whom we lost to a couple weeks ago down in Kingsville, and we were definitely ready for some revenge.

We started the game off strong and Kingsville just couldn’t keep up. We went into halftime up by 34 points and we finished the game with every person on the team scoring.

It was a very special night for us as our lone senior, JoAnne Jones, played her final game in Wisdom Gym. She is such a huge aspect to this team and we are definitely going to miss her next year. But, the season isn’t over for her at all!

With the win Saturday, we clenched a spot in the Lone Star Conference Tournament and as it looks right now, we will be playing Southeastern Oklahoma for our first game. This is the only team in our cross-over games that we fell to, so we will be very happy to get a second chance at them. But we will take it game by game and right now we have a week off before playing our final conference game against Angelo State. We are going to work hard this week and really focus on getting better.

Thanks for all the support thus far this season and we hope you continue to follow us on the road for the rest of the season!

"Courtside" with Sonya Sundberg

Heading to Midwestern!!! We are exactly halfway through conference with two losses on our hands, falling to West Texas A&M and Texas A&M Kingsville. Both were close games, that we just couldn’t pull out at the end. It has really been a learning experience because there were so many things in both of those games that could have gone differently. But no reason to dwell, we just have to get ‘em back in our home territory!

On Wednesday we faced MSU at home. We started the game off strong and jumped to a 10-2 lead in the first few minutes of the game. From there, our lead eventually turned into about 20 going in to halftime. We didn’t come out quite as strong as we should have and they ended up making a little run on us, but we quickly got back on track and ended with the win. As part of rivalry week, we head t o Wichita Falls to play them again tomorrow. We all know that this game is going to be totally different at their place and therefore have to come out even stronger and work even harder than before.

After Midwestern we head to Eastern New Mexico on Wednesday where we will be faced with another very tough challenge! It is time to put our road games to the test!!

"Courtside" with Sonya Sundberg

Conference is off and running!!! We faced Angelo State Saturday night in our first conference game of the season and came away with a great victory. We started off the game pretty much neck and neck with them but late in the first half we had a huge spark defensively and went into the locker room up by 14. We knew we had to come out strong the second half because this is a very tough team to play. We ended up doing a great job the second half and really had a great game defensively.

Speaking of defense, we worked hard on it all week after our loss to University of Texas Permian Basin on Monday in Odessa. This was a tough loss for us and we really had a break down defensively. Therefore, we knew that if we wanted to get back on a winning streak we would have to work much harder on defense. The UTPB game was definitely a controversial ending with the clock not starting, but it is like Coach Hearne told us after the game, we really should have never let it get to that point. On a positive note, I think it was good for us to be in a close game at the end and hopefully we will learn from that game and make it worth something.

We head to Denton on Monday to make up the game from over Christmas break, and then we are back at home against Eastern New Mexico on Wednesday to continue conference play. I appreciate everyone that came out last night and I know the rest of the team does too!! Go TexAnns!

"Courtside" with Sonya Sundberg

Happy New Year!!! I hope everyone had a great Christmas. Before the Christmas break we traveled to Oklahoma to face East Central on the 12th and Southeastern Oklahoma on the 14th. We had a slower start in the East Central game, but came out of halftime with a different mind set and pulled out the win. Southeastern gave us our first and only loss of the season thus far. It was a close game all the way through but they got the better of us in the end. We concluded the month of December with two wins at home against Southwestern Oklahoma and Cameron.

We all enjoyed about 6 days off from basketball, and returned the 28th for practice. We have had a very tough week of practices and are ready to start playing in games again. We start off the New Year with a game against Texas Wesleyan tomorrow evening, January 2nd at 5 pm. We hope you come out and see us start 2010 off right!!

"Courtside" with Sonya Sundberg

7-0!!!! I am so proud of every single person on the team! We matched the best start since 1982 or somewhere around there!! We are so excited! Last week we had two huge wins against two very good teams. On Tuesday we played Central Oklahoma at home. This is the team that has knocked us out of the conference tournament the past few years and we knew they were going to come out fighting! We started off strong and then died down a little but were able to hang on to a good lead going in to halftime. Then second half we started strong and didn’t stop, winning by 30 points. Everyone played so great and we had everyone on the team score! That just shows how deep this team is.

Then Thursday we played against Northeastern State, another very good team from the North. Last year we played this team and lost by around 20, so again we wanted some revenge. Unfortunately, we did not have such a great start. We were slow to get going in this game and it showed, going in to halftime with a 4 point deficit. Many people including myself just looked so down going in the locker room and luckily we have teammates to keep our heads up. Namely, Kelsey Benford, who said, “ya’ll act like we already lost, lets go!” This really woke us up, especially me. It was definitely a tough mental game after such an emotional win over UCO. But we came out after the second half and never looked back, playing like the true TexAnns. It was a tough game and Northeastern was very well coached and great three point shooters, but our defense is what really won us the game.

We have this week off due to finals, but we will be back at it Saturday when we head to Oklahoma to play East Central. Next week will be our next big test heading to Oklahoma twice in just a few days. After East Central, we face Southeastern, who just beat West Texas A&M this last weekend in Canyon. We know that these will be tough games, but if we prepare we have no doubt we can beat them! Thanks to everyone who came out and supported us last week!! You make all the difference!!

Go TexAnns!!!

"Courtside" with Effran Bryant

Tarleton State University Basketball continues to strive for excellence by being the only school with Men’s and Women’s Basketball teams to still be undefeated in the Lone Star Conference…

It is a great feeling going into our game tonight against the University of Central Oklahoma, who has become a great rival to Tarleton State University since I have been a Texan. We spent this last week together as a team. Many other teams around the national got to go home and spend time with the family. We spent the week of Thanksgiving as an extended family getting back to the basics. We used the week to add and fine tune our offense and defense getting ready to go into crossover play in the LSC. I felt really well about us getting together on Thanksgiving and just sitting around and thinking about the things we are thankful for as a team and individuals.

Later that night, we all got together and went to see “The Blind Side”. This inspiration gives us the extra push to come in on Saturday and play very well against Wiley College who had been playing very well in the last couple of games before ours. Now with the 4-0 start and us playing extremely well, I think we are ready to take on our rival UCO.

Over my three years, UCO has knocked us out of postseason play every year. I feel very good about the emphasis of how big this game is to our very young season. We have met some very worthy opponents. This will be an early test of how good we can be in this conference. Coach Reisman, the coaching staff, and the returners have expressed the strong feeling that we have towards UCO. I think the new faces to our team have bought in strong additions to the Tarleton attitude and demeanor.

I hope to see everyone tonight at 6 p.m. to support the girls and immediately following stay and cheer for our game.