Spartans vs. MP1

Well yesterday was the day. After essentially a month of anticipation we finally got to have our go against MP and the game was every bit as competitive as I’d expected.

I get to the game a little bit earlier than a half hour and get to see a good portion of the 6th grade girls team getting blown out by another team. It was not a pretty sight. The MP coach arrived early and we chatted a little bit before the game. He seemed like a nice guy and we chatted with each other quite amiably. Anyhow we straggle in, with 9 of the 10 players getting there by the designated time of 5:30. I had been informed we were going to start the game 10 minutes early, which I objected to under the grounds that my whole team might not be there. However, when at 5:35 we had all buy Gordie there I said we can go ahead and Goride arrived just as we were going over to the huddle to talk.

In the pregame huddle I reminded them of some of the highlights of last night’s speech and then explained that our offensive focus would be beating them back. I wanted that ball in bounded quickly, sent to the outlet even quicker. On defense I identified our priority as helping out in our man-to-man defense. And then it was time to send our starting five of David, Tom, Brian, Scott, and Lucas out there. The good news is that this team is not particularly tall. It seems like when the two MP teams were divvying up the players MP2 took the taller players, who were slightly less athletic, while MP took the slightly more athletic players.

They come out and right off the bat run basically the same high screen play that MP2 ran. As they were running this play the third time, (they called it 1) though not on consecutive possessions I shouted out “Watch the high pick. Just like the other MP team ran.” My players adjusted accordingly and we only saw this play one other time during the game. They also ran a double pick play that proved quite effective. It led to numerous fouls being called on us and several baskets as well. They were a good shooting free throw team and we quickly fell behind. I was not surprised that we were committing so many fouls. I didn’t do a good job of calling fouls during the 3 on 3 drill we did and the Animal Rebounding drill is predicated on not calling too many fouls, so our team had gotten a little sloppy.

Meanwhile on our side of the ball, they were running a 2-1-2 defense. I basically let our offense try and work the motion and see if they could create something, but to no avail. I called a 30 second time out, switched Brian and David, and instructed them to run Indiana. We ran it on a few possessions and on one of them it actually resulted in a basket. There were a couple of other times where when we had a look, but the player didn’t take it before the play broke down. MP basically shut down the play by preventing us from making the first pass. Part of this was because Tom and David were going down the court on the same side each time, so the pass was going the same direction each time. Even if that first pass was getting there they were then executing a very high trap leading to a turn over. I think I’m going to make a few minor changes to the play, or rather teach them a variant, that should help us out in that situation. But I’m glad we had a success with it. We’re going to need it against the JCC team in the HP tourney so I’m pleased with our improvement.

Between their offense and defense they had opened up a 7 point lead at the end of the first. In many ways we were lucky it wasn’t 11 or so. During the huddle between quarters I diagramed the double screen play that they were running for the team. David, bless his heart, had already figured out the whole play, and a couple of others in the game had figured out parts of it, which is again a testament to their basketball IQs. There was a funny moment. We were kind of slow getting into our huddle. I heard their coach start to diagram their press break. A kid asked how he knew that we were going to press and the coach just replied that he knew. I smiled since I knew I had no intention of pressing, or even pressuring them at the start of the quarter. I wanted to save it until we were either in slightly more dire straights, or for the 4th quarter.

We come out pretty flat in the second quarter. They don’t have their first string in there and the subs I’ve made didn’t really hurt our quality of player out there much, so the game stays pretty much at a standstill for a bit. However, then the phantom calls started happening. In the first quarter ever call that was made was legitimate. But in that second quarter we were getting called for all sorts of things which simply weren’t there. We quickly go into bonus and then double bonus. At one point Lucas gets called for a foul which was not a foul. In fact Lucas was called for 3 fouls none of which were great calls, not surprising as coming into the game Lucas had committed only 2 fouls the whole season. After this call which was not a call, I asked what the foul was. They said Lucas’s number. I said I heard who it was on. What was the call. I say it in an inquiring tone, but it was my way of asking “what the heck?” During baseball I NEVER question the umpire. And really I hadn’t talked to these refs too much, but the officiating was highly suspect this game and it was too close of a game for me not to grow a bit frustrated.

Anyhow, we’re really out of sorts. They are basically running a trapping defense against us in the second quarter and it had some success. However, our offense FINALLY kicked into gear and we started to create some fast break opportunities. This allowed the refs to call some specious travel violations, but it also caught us up from what had been at one point a 9 point deficit to only 5. Credit for this change in offensive pace really belongs with David and Jack P, though Jack M helped as well here.

During half time I kept the talk simple. I asked what our offensive goal for the day was. I’m met with blank stares. I pointed out that it was beating the other team back down the court. That’s what we needed to be doing and weren’t doing. Then I talked about the fouls. I said that they were calling things in this game that they hadn’t in previous games and we needed to recognize that. I reminded them that basically any contact in the lane was going to be called a foul so if you were playing help defense, which we’d been doing a good job of doing, make sure you tried to meet the man outside of the lane. We talked a little bit about how to take a charge and then I sent them back out there.

The big difference in the 3rd quarter was our defense. They kept going back to the well of the play with the double screen, but it got less and less effective, until finally by the end of the quarter they stopped running it. Meanwhile, their zone started to get sloppy. We were running enough transition offense that they weren’t making their traps work. Plus having David and the Jacks being able to dribble through a lot of them helped. By the end of the 3rd quarter we’d pulled to with-in 2. And then we tied it up. We got the ball back with 9 seconds. I told David, who was taking the ball up the court, that we had plenty of time. Someone on the bench scoffed at this and I pointed out that 8 seconds was enough time for two shots. Sure enough we got a good shot off with about 3 seconds left, but it missed. Lucas grabbed the rebound and put it back in half a second before the buzzer went off and we entered the fourth quarter up by two. After Lucas made that shot, our bench exploded. Honestly you’d have thought that was the end of the game. However, seeing the pure joy of his teammates caused Lucas to flash one of the best smiles I’ve seen in a long time. That moment right there is a big reason I coach sports.

I pulled the team together and said “It’s games like this that make me love basketball. This is fun. Each quarter we’ve been doing better. We started off down by 7, narrowed it down to 5 at half and now we’re up by 2. We’ve got 7 more minutes to play and we’re going to win this game.” And sure enough the 4th quarter was ours. We were still getting called for a bunch of fouls, but they weren’t making as many of their shots, and there were less shooting fouls anyway. More importantly we were doing a great job of moving the ball around on offense. Brian hit a couple of clutch outside shots which made them guard our perimeter more giving us more players open inside. On defense we continued to hold them SO tightly. Lucas drew a key offensive foul that was a big moral booster. With about 2 minutes left we’d extended our lead to 6. Tom had started doing a chant of “Defense” from the bench that was great. Our players were pumped and their side was not. With about 90 seconds their PG, who was a pretty good player, fouled out.

Not too long after that they decided to start fouling us. Now they’d had their own share of fouls in the second half and so when they foul Scott and they went to the line, I thought it was a 1 and 1. Scott missed the first shot, and there’s no jostling or anything, which didn’t even register at the time. Jack P ends up with the ball. I tell him to shoot. At that point one of the MP players starts guarding him. Jack goes in strong for a lay-up, which he makes and there’s a whistle. Looks like it’s going to be a possible three point play.

Their coach starts asking if the foul wasn’t an intentional foul. He thought they did the signal for an intentional foul. I had been talking with someone on the bench, so while I saw the foul, I didn’t pay attention to the call. The two refs conferred and agreed it’d been a called an intentional foul. And let me say that I thought that was an awful call. I mean granted they were trying to intentionally foul us, but it wasn’t like they Scott was in any danger of being hurt. After it was agreed that it was a two shot foul, the coach gets very upset and starts going off at the refs on how they don’t even know the rules of the game. He’s really livid about the poor officiating.

Something I’d never mentioned before is that the refs who typically do our games are a pair of brothers, while the scoreboard operator is a third brother. So as the MP coach is going off on the refs, the scoreboard operator tells him to cool it. They go back and forth for a little and finally the MP coach does quiet down. Since it was an intentional foul, we get the ball back. When the ref comes over, the scoreboard guy whispers to him about the MP coach. The ref then tells the coach not to yell at the scorer’s table. This starts a heated discussion between the ref and the MP coach. At one point the ref had to say, “Coach lower your voice there are kids around.” The MP’s coach was two fold: the scoreboard operator started it, he doesn’t really have the authority to tell me to be quiet, and because of this if he talks to me I’ll talk back. While I think the scoreboard operator did have the authority to say what he said, I otherwise agree with the MP coach. This discussion, which took a minute or two, really took a lot of the good feeling out of the game, which was unfortunate. As it was going on, I even said “this is a shame.” Gordie asked me why and I said that it was taking away from our great victory. Finally that whole discussion finishes.

They keep fouling us and in the end we win by 12, 36-24, though it was far more of a 6 or 8 point victory, just because of the way the end of the game went down. Our bench leapt up with great joy. We were very happy at winning this game, no doubt about it. We went through and shook their hands. At the end I shook the hand of the MP coach and we exchanged a few pleasant words about each others team and agreed that the officiating was horrible. I had been quite pleased with the officiating we’d had up until this point, but this game was just not called well.

This game reinforces a few things. One we thrive off a transition offense. In the 3rd and 4th quarters we did a good job of running a half-court offense, but it was because we’d changed the tempo of the game. My dad, who is obviously biased, feels that the other team was out coached. I’m not sure that’s true at all. I think I’m getting a lot of credit, from not only my dad but the other parents for things that the team did naturally. Now a few of my decisions have been good decisions. So, for instance, we don’t have plays. Instead we work on drills and offense more abstractly. When MP was forced to stop using their plays and go into more just playing basketball, we were more than up for the task. So I guess I do deserve credit for that. At the same time, their coach has taught them how to trap pretty well, both full and half court, and we haven’t done that at all. So I’ll add that to our list of goals of things to do between now and the end of the season.

One thing I did, and it was a pretty conscious decision, was weight the playing time in favor of certain players. I don’t think I did as good of job of balancing our need to win with players having the right to play as I did in some other games. I’ll talk about those specific cases as we look at individual performances.

Brian – Talked with him before the game. The conversation went well and he had a great game. Took four shots and made them all. He is definitely our best jump shot player. He will be getting the start again today against WK.

Dante – Only saw 7.5 minutes of play and did much better in that time than he had in the last couple of games, pulling down 4 rebounds, a block, and a steal in that time. He’s going to start as well today. Scott and Lucas were having good games as well, and so I felt bad at the time that Dante wasn’t getting more time, but was reluctant to pull the trigger in getting him more time.

David – Another excellent game. He and Jack P helped get our game going. My dad thought he’d only sat like 3 or 4 minutes, but really he played about 21 minutes, or ¾ of a game. I don’t feel bad about that at all and David could easily be seeing that kind of playing time again in our games. Everyone is a better player with David on the court. He leads our team in points, but is also second in assists. He’s a true team player and doesn’t act like a star, so I don’t feel bad at all about giving him the chance to shine.

Gordie – Gordie got into serious foul trouble which limited his time to only 6 and a half minutes. Once again his turnovers killed us. He also lost time since I yanked him earlier than I would have in the 4th after he put up an atrocious shot while double teamed. He knew it was a bad shot, but claimed he was open when he started to take it. I responded that if he’d said that and had used good form, I would have been ok with the shot. But the shot was with awful form and in a bad spot. What was interesting was that even after this conversation he said after Lucas drew the offensive foul, “I’ve never had a coach who is nice and good before.” That was a really nice thing to hear and shows how if you’re fair and respectful to a kid, you can impose consequences (you shoot bad shots and you come out) and they won’t hold it against you.

Jack M – Here was another player I’d like to have played more in the end of the game but for whom there wasn’t a spot and so he too will get the start today. He did have 12 minutes on the game, and played well in that time. There was something slippery on the basket by our bench and so a couple of times Jack turned the ball over when it wasn’t his fault. I was pleased with how he played and feel good about giving him the start today.

Jack P – He had a great first half, as mentioned. While he missed a lot of shots in the second half, which is typical for him, I felt he was key to our victory and he was the only player I named specifically in our post game talk. He’ll start again today.

Lucas – While he didn’t rebound particularly well in his time (only 3 in 15 minutes of play) he made the basket off our zone breaker, on a nice feed from David, and was clutch when we needed it. Not his best game, but he’s an important piece of our puzzle.

Noah – A continued nothing in his 8.5 minutes of play. He’s a really nice kid and I told him that if he will go a whole continuous motion without walking or stopping that I would start him, he doesn’t really bring much to the game either offensively or defensively. Gordie, has some play making instincts, but Noah is pretty much over matched on the court. I really like him, but he just hasn’t progressed as much as a player as I’d like.

Scott – He continues to play big. He came in second on the team in minutes, with 21. In reality we’d likely have been OK if some of those minutes had gone to Dante/Lucas, but he works well with David (in other words he’s excellent at finding David as an outlet) and you’ll rarely have anything but positive energy from him.

Tom – Tom is a crucial member of the team. I played him the whole first quarter and he only saw 3 minutes of play after that, at the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th. When I took him out in the 4th he said “I stink”. I was not pleased to hear him say this, as Tom is the one who will start us cheering, as he did here. Or provide that comic relief. While he gets frustrated with himself he never is anything but positive and supportive of his teammates. While I think he’s slightly under achieving for his basketball skills, so the frustration is somewhat understandable, I don’t think he’s as bad as he thinks he is. I hope that he can have a break out game one of these games to give himself some confidence.

Today we play WK. They’ve put up a lot of points lately and I think that they’re going to upset someone soon, despite their 1-4 record. I don’t want it to be us. In my pregame talk I’m going to focus on not having a “let down game”. We’re a superior team and if we play like it, we’ll win easily. However, if we don’t play our top game we could be in trouble.

Let me just close with this: the best thing about this victory was that we were behind the whole first half. I talk about the difference between a good and a great team. And I knew they had it in them to come from behind. However, they didn’t know that. Now they do. While over confidence was starting to become a problem, and will likely rear its head again depending on how we do in the HP tourney, we needed to know that not only could we get out to a lead and hold it, but that we could come back. We didn’t believe it when we played the JCC team last time, but this team we should believe it. If we can win well today, in what could be a potential pitfall game, we’ll be in a good place for the HP tourney, which I’ll talk about more in a post tomorrow or Tuesday.