{"id":40891,"date":"2013-01-16T12:00:38","date_gmt":"2013-01-16T17:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=40891"},"modified":"2013-01-16T12:00:54","modified_gmt":"2013-01-16T17:00:54","slug":"colgate-career-ends-for-brase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=40891","title":{"rendered":"Colgate Career Ends for Brase"},"content":{"rendered":"

By John Painter<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

(Hamilton, NY \u2013 Jan. 15, 2015) Colgate\u2019s first dose of adversity for its 2013 women’s basketball team struck right down the center. As in, the all-important center position.<\/p>\n

Team captain Lulu Brase was ruled out this past the weekend for the rest of the season \u2013 and her career \u2013 with a stress fracture in her knee. It\u2019s the final straw in a series of knee ailments that plagued the senior post player throughout her Raiders career.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not how I wanted to end my career, especially going into league play,\u201d Brase said of the timing.<\/p>\n

But Colgate head coach Nicci Hays Fort said there was more at stake than just basketball.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking out for her future health,\u201d Hays Fort said. \u201cShe\u2019s way too young to be thinking about a knee replacement. It was just too scary of a situation to put her into by trying to continue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hays Fort informed the team right before the trip to Washington for Saturday\u2019s Patriot League opener against American. The Raiders lost, 54-45.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a really hard day when we told the team, and it\u2019s going to be fresh and hard for Lulu for a while,\u201d Hays Fort said. \u201cBut she\u2019s also become a very good leader. Just because you\u2019re an upperclassman doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re a leader, but Lulu fits the description.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd Lulu had developed herself into a really good player for us. She was playing some of her best basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n

Friends and Family<\/b><\/p>\n

Brase on Jan. 3 was one rebound shy of her first career double-double in the 72-36 win over NJIT. She finished with a collegiate-best 15 points and nine boards. Two games before that, Brase tallied nine points and a career-high 10 rebounds at Iona.<\/p>\n

The daughter of German parents who moved to this country before she and her brothers were born, Brase said she was lucky to have had her final collegiate performance Jan. 6 in Charlotte near her Lake Wylie, S.C., home. She posted four points and eight rebounds against a tough 49ers squad that beat the Raiders, 57-33.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was thinking about it and I was blessed to be able to go home and play in front of my friends and family,\u201d she said. \u201cI can say I ended my career playing in front of the people who are closest to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brase finishes with 116 points and 132 rebounds in just 45 collegiate games. She missed all of her sophomore season two years ago because of injury, but returned to make a difference for the 2012-13 Raiders. Brase started 14 straight games to begin this season \u2013 her first starts since 2009-10.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe wanted to be a factor on the team and she was,\u201d Hays Fort said. \u201cShe earned the starting role and she loves the game. If she didn\u2019t, it would have been easy for her to walk away last year or the year before.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was a very good high school player who came here and then had a series of injuries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brase\u2019s career averages of 2.6 points and 2.9 rebounds were both nearly doubled by this year\u2019s numbers of 4.9 and 4.7, respectively. And she was shooting 46 percent from the field this season \u2013 four points above her career mark.<\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely would have kept going if I could, but medically it just wouldn\u2019t be smart,\u201d Brase said. \u201cI want to be able to walk in my future and run around with my kids. But, yeah, I\u2019ve been through a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teaching and Coaching Future<\/b><\/p>\n

An English major, Brase graduates in May and already is looking for teaching and coaching jobs. She hopes to stay in the Northeast so she can watch her younger brothers, Hans at Princeton and Janpeter at St. Lawrence, continue their basketball careers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt should be an interesting future,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Hays Fort is reconfiguring the pieces from what is now a noticeable hole down the center of Colgate\u2019s offensive and defensive plans.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was a solid presence inside and we\u2019re going to miss her perseverance and optimism on the court,\u201d the Raiders coach said. \u201cShe\u2019s given us everything she could. She is a captain for us and will continue to be a leader.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, she\u2019s going to be at practice every day and be down there with the posts. She just can\u2019t get in there and bang around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hays Fort said she had hoped this year to bring freshman forward Josie Stockill along slowly while learning the collegiate ropes. Now, those plans might have changed.<\/p>\n

\u201cJosie\u2019s going to have to learn from Lulu and get better,\u201d Hays Fort said. \u201cLulu has a really calm demeanor about her and that will be good for Josie. Lulu\u2019s always working for the betterment of the team; she\u2019s someone who always takes care of her business.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s a good upperclassman for our freshmen to look up to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brase agrees. It\u2019s not her first choice, but there\u2019s still work to do this season with 13 league games remaining and a real chance for improvement over last year\u2019s 8-22 showing.<\/p>\n

The Raiders are 6-9 heading into Wednesday\u2019s 7 p.m. game at Bucknell. They host Lehigh on Saturday at 4 p.m.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have any upperclassmen in the post, so I\u2019ll be there helping them out with what I see and just be the biggest cheerleader I can,\u201d Brase said. \u201cHopefully, they can do things I would have done on the court.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By John Painter (Hamilton, NY \u2013 Jan. 15, 2015) Colgate\u2019s first dose of adversity for its 2013 women’s basketball team struck right down the center. As in, the all-important center position. Team captain Lulu Brase was ruled out this past the weekend for the rest of the season \u2013 and her career \u2013 with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40891\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}