As the Citrus College men’s basketball team makes their march towards history, Citrus College sophomore Darren Moore will be updating the Fighting Owl faithful with the comings and goings of the team while they are in Stockton, CA. It’s an exclusive inside look at what the players are thinking and feeling as they continue their journey to a state title. If you missed yesterday’s edition you can read it right here.
Part 3: Morning Practice
Hello everybody, it’s 1:52pm and I’m in my room waiting for the pizza that our coaches ordered for us. It’s been a pretty busy mourning with breakfast at 9:45 along with watching film on our opponents. 
We had another great practice today, with everybody locked into what we have to do. Everyone is sharp and at performing at a high concentration level, which is a good thing because we need to be focused.
The best thing is, we still are loose and laughing as normal. Cracking jokes and arguing about dumb stuff, which is just what we have done all year. At the end of practice, we had our manager and Coach Doc play a game of one on one. The game was the highlight of our day so far; however, it didn’t get finished due to the lack of scoring and time limit ha-ha.
I taped the game on my phone, so when I get back, I’ll put it on YouTube for the world to view. Anyways, we are all about to eat and get some rest. Personally, I’m about to go get some treatment and some rest myself. I will update you all after our dinner tonight with all of the remaining teams.
Part 4: Dinner and Getting Ready
Hey everyone, we are all back from the team dinner that I mentioned in the other blogs. Prior to that, some of the coaches along with Buchi and I went to University of the Pacific (Where the State Championships are being held). While we were there I got some treatment on my hip, and we also got to view some of the girls’ JC games. Being in the gym got me excited for tomorrow, and ready for the challenge that we will face.
After that, we came back to the hotel to meet with the rest of the team so that we could attend the committee dinner. When we arrived at the Grand Hotel for the dinner, LA Trade Tech was getting off the bus the same time we were. Being that we have some LA guys on our team; the back and forth banter started to begin. Simple words were exchanged but nothing serious; just all in the spirit of competition.
After that, we all headed upstairs to be seated for dinner with all the remaining teams. While walking in, the first teams we saw were our rivals Bakersfield and College of Sequoias. There were plenty of mean looks being exchanged throughout the room, and the tension was extremely high. However, as time went on and everyone was seated, you could tell who was just simply happy to be there and who came to play. Not to mention any names of schools, but there were way too many pictures being taken by players. We are here to win a championship, not at Disneyland.
After we all ate, they gave all the coaches of the remaining teams a plaque for making it this far. You could tell by the looks around the Citrus table that we meant business. All of our discussions had to do with our team, and the games that are ahead of us in the future. We are heavily locked into our goal and doing what we set out to do.
After all the discussions, we got on the bus and headed back to the hotel. We discussed our arrangements for film, bed times, and wake up calls. We’ve got shoot-around pretty early, so I’m going to knock out, but I’ll keep everyone updated after our shoot-around in the morning.
-Darren Moore