Weeks of preparation, scrimmages and anticipation have led to tonight’s season opening contests for both the Central men’s and women’s basketball teams. The Dutch will hit the road to two separate locations; the men are in Illinois to take on Monmouth, and the women play rival Grinnell to begin their 2013-14 campaigns. Each squad is trying to improve on a ten-win season from a year ago, with a majority of each team’s wins coming in their non-conference schedule. The intensity has been upped for this year’s away-from-the-league games, and Dutch men’s coach, Craig Douma says he will learn a lot about his team with this first handful of contests. Women’s coach, Chelsea Petersen, talks about her keys to the game against the Pioneers.

“Our first two scrimmages of the year, we got off a lot of shots, and we need to shoot a fairly high percentage,” Petersen says. “It’s going to come down to playing cohesively as a young unit, defending the ball very well, limiting Grinnell to one-shot opportunities and boxing out, and then executing, slowing down, having poise and executing our offense. If we do those things, we’ll put ourselves in a very good position to have our first win of the season.”

Both games tonight tip-off at 7:00 p.m.

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