The Cougars are in Australia for a two-week tour which includes four cities and five games. Each day a different Coug will blog about his day. Our sixth one comes from freshman Richard Longrus, Jr., a 6-7 forward from Oakland, Calif.

I definitely like Sydney a lot, I like it more than Melbourne, it's a great city. I love the architecture, especially on the high-rises. It's great to walk around and get a feel for how everything was built. The opera house was beautiful. It was nice to finally get to go on the tour, because it's one of those things you always see and hear about, so it's nice to see it close up. It was neat to learn about how the opera house was built, architecturally it was very interesting to me, I plan to study architecture at Washington State. It was always interesting hear about the different performances the place holds, from the symphony to Kanye West, it's a wide variety. Sydney, I like a lot, it reminds me a little of San Francisco with all the people walking around, the high-rise buildings and the taxis. It makes me feel a little bit like I'm at home when I'm walking around downtown.

The game today was definitely good for the team. Brock played really well, he had 25 and Reggie had 21. I think we played really hard, but we don't have our defensive principles and plans down yet. Offensively, once we get comfortable, we'll play better. We are still getting to know each other and learning how to play together. The Hawks are a good team, they played well. They're a professional team, so we were playing against a bunch of men, while a lot of us aren't even 20 years old yet. It's not fun to lose, we'd love to win every game...we're competitive. I'm excited to play the next two games and see how we improve, how we respond and just get better.

Go Cougs,
Junior Longrus