Men's basketball team needs to make itself at home on road

By Aaron Juarez

Inevitably, there is one brick wall that blocks a team's path to success. My favorite teams know it all too well. For the A's, it's the first round of the playoffs; for the Raiders, the Kansas City Chiefs. For the Sharks, it's the Dallas Stars.

Here at Santa Clara, it's playing on the road. In the first half of the season, the road did not seem to haunt the Broncos as much as they won two road games at San Jose State and Montana State en route to a six-game winning streak.

But the winning streak came to a screeching halt after road losses to Eastern Washington and Oregon. That's become the story so far for the men's basketball seasonâ€"slowly gaining momentum only to lose it on a road trip. At any level of sports, there is always one constant: successful teams win on the road. Home games are a safety net for many teams, yet winning on the road, facing adversity at the hands of a hostile crowd and a motivated opponent, proves a team's mettle.

While the Broncos have coasted to a 10-4 record on the Leavey Center floor, their 3-9 road slide has placed extra weight on their shoulders going into the WCC Tournament. Thanks in part to an 0-5 conference record on the road, Santa Clara has slipped to fifth place in the WCC and is now in danger of missing out on a first-round bye in the tournament.

With the tournament's new format, the top two teams receive byes into the semifinals, only having to win twice to take the conference title and an automatic berth to the NCAA Tournament. The third and fourth-place teams get a first-round bye to the quarterfinals, while the fifth through eighth-place teams must win four games in four days to win the tournament.

After winning their first three conference games at home, Santa Clara dropped two road games by 32 and 16 points. On the road, double-digit losses have occurred often. On Santa Clara's current seven-game road losing streak, five of the losses have come by 10 or more points.

What is shocking and most frustrating is that the Broncos are dropping games that they should be winning. There is no excuse for losing to a team like San Diego, but honestly, I didn't have the highest hopes after watching Santa Clara sleepwalk through much of their home win over the Toreros two days earlier.

This Jekyll-and-Hyde performance by the Broncos is maddening. I want to see the team that took Mississippi State to the wire, the team that kept attacking Portland and Loyola Marymount at home, and I especially want to see the team that fought tooth-and-nail with the Gonzaga Bulldogs.

With three games left before the WCC Tournament and two of those three on the road, Santa Clara will need to win at least two to have a shot at a first-round bye. Considering that the road games are against Portland and Gonzaga, taking two of three will be a tall order.

But not only would spoiling Gonzaga's last home game at the Kennel be sweet revenge, it would give the Broncos momentum heading home for the WCC Tournament. But in order to accomplish that, the Broncos need to shake off the road stigma and play like the team we are accustomed to seeing at the Leavey Center.

û Contact Aaron Juarez at (408) 554-4852 or ajuarez@scu.edu.