The Vipers are about to play their second and third games in a row with the same roster. Sound standard? It should, but it hasn’t been.

The Rio Grande Valley Vipers have been in a state of transition for a little while now. They made about a million moves before the start of the last home stand (thanks in-part to injuries and GATORADE Call-Ups). They have since reversed two of those moves and this is now pretty much the team the Vipers had while they were picking up road wins at a record pace, just a little deeper (those previously empty roster spots are now occupied by Kelvin Lewis and Arinze Onuaku and there’s also Rockets-assignee Hasheem Thabeet to consider).

Despite that, the Vipers got their clocks cleaned this week by the Idaho Stampede. This series reminded me a little bit of last year when the Vipers went into Iowa and embarrassed them on their home court. Iowa was the consensus best team in the league and very difficult to beat at home. The Vipers, however, were chock full of fire power, and to say the least, they used it. The Stampede are loaded right now. They have an incredibly dangerous team, one that is capable of taking home the hardware if they hold onto the #8 seed. Remember, the Stampede opened this season with two wins in their first 15 games. Since then they’re 19-12. So before you look at them and say, how could they beat the Vipers? They’re now just 21-25… dig in the corners. They’re really really good.

Still, that doesn’t mean they should’ve blown the doors off the Vipers twice in a week. I had a sound byte from Coach Finch to insert here, but my bloggie’s been acting up. The video’s fine, but the microphone has been distorting the audio. Anyway, what Coach said is that the team had been playing Championship caliber defense and they need to get back to doing that. Coach told us yesterday Inside the Vipers Nest presented by IDEA Public Schools that he thinks scoring is overrated.

Makes sense… defense wins championships. You don’t need to win by 50. You only need to win by one…

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Texas plays at Tulsa tonight, so the Vipers are practicing at Owasso High School. It’s a 6A school. Apparently there are somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 students here. Based on that, I was expecting a bigger gym. It’s smaller than both Harlingen South, Edinburg, Weslaco and Weslaco East. It’s somewhat similar in makeup to Mission Veterans, although I think there are fewer seats. *shrug*

The Vipers are practicing with NBA Development League basketballs. I don’t see a ball rack. I wonder if we had to bring our own.

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It’s going to be an intense weekend. Play at Tulsa Saturday, get on a bus for Frisco. Should get in about 3 a.m. Then play at Texas at 3 p.m. I wonder who decided it would be a good idea for a basketball team to play a day game after a night game.