Steens Handles Highs and Lows of Freshman Campaign
February 5, 2003

By Joe Monaco, AU Sports Information

Freshman life is all about choices and adjustments.

No longer are your parents waking you up for morning classes – the responsibility is yours.

No longer do you have to be home by a certain curfew – you decide your own hours.

No longer are you surrounded by the familiar confines of home – college is your new home.

You learn from every moment and grow from every experience during your first year in college.

Chris Steens (Akron, OH/Central Hower) may be a freshman in the eyes of the Ashland University, but the knowledge he has attained and experiences he has grown from on the basketball court makes him an upperclassman in the eyes of his teammates and coaches.

“Right now, he is no longer a freshman,” said head coach Roger Lyons. “We have five games left to go in the season and we are bringing him off the bench so he is getting some minutes. We can’t have him going out there and feeling his way around the floor, we need productive minutes from him.”

Steens is getting a rare opportunity to see playing time as a true freshman where most newcomers are stuck at the end of the bench observing or sitting out a season in order to increase their strength and knowledge of the game.

“I think that I would still consider myself a freshman because I am still experiencing those typical freshman moments where I get frustrated and down on myself,” explained Steens. “I am very hard on myself, but I try to listen to what the coaches tell me and learn from it.”

Ashland is currently 15-6 and 7-5 in Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference action with five games remaining in the season. The Eagles are in a three-way tie for second place in the GLIAC South Division with Gannon and Wayne State and are in a battle for a berth in the NCAA Division II regional tournament.

Steens has played an important role for the Eagles by giving them productivity off the bench with his shooting skills and ability to run the floor in Lyons’ open-court offense.

“I look at myself as a strong player who runs the floor real well and is a shooter. I don’t like to be categorized as a shooter because that’s not all that I can do on the floor. I see myself as an all-around player who can shoot the three, but also take the ball to the hole,” Steens said.

Lyons agrees that Steens not only fits well into his offensive system, but is a player who can become a major factor in the Eagles’ plans for the future.

“When we recruited Chris, we thought that he was going to be a very good fast break, open-court player and we were right. He has a real ability to get the ball and explode, attack the rim and we really like that and feel that it will be a great advantage for Chris in his days at Ashland,” added Lyons.

Steens has had a roller coaster freshman campaign with his shares of highs and lows, but overall he has made positive strides in his game and made positive contributions to the team. He is averaging 6.4 points a game and shooting 40 percent from the field and 37 percent from three-point land.

Steens saw many of his high moments in the beginning of the season when he hit a crucial three in the last seconds against Bellarmine to send the game into overtime. Ashland went on to win the game in double overtime, 120-115, and Steens finished with 16 points. Two nights later, he scored a career-high 17 points in a 98-69 win against Malone.

“I think that I am doing pretty well. I am having a typical freshman year – up and down and at times I haven’t been too consistent. I started off the season pretty well, but towards the middle I went into a little lapse, but I’m coming back,” said Steens.

The good thing about freshmen is they have three more years to improve their all-around game. Steens is in a good situation because he and the coaches both know what areas he will have to improve on when the season concludes.

“I really need to work on my middle game. I need to be able to pull up and hit a jumper off a screen. I am not as consistent right now as I need to be. I need to continue to work on consistently hitting three-pointers and taking the ball to the hole, which are my strengths. If I improve then my opponents will have trouble guarding me,” Steens said.

“We feel that Chris needs to become a better defensive player. As his days go on here and he becomes more critical to our success, we want him to continue to do the things that he does well, but also get better at the things that he doesn’t do well. I think that he can only get better as he gets stronger and smarter,” added Lyons.

That’s the beauty of being a freshman.

No longer do you have to come into college with all of the right answers, but as Chris Steens has learned you have to be willing to work hard and learn from your mistakes in order to achieve success.