MP2 Playoff Game

We were feeling good. The team was supremely confident, already asking about the championship. I reminded them we had a very tough, but winnable, game in front of us. I had a brainstorm driving home the day before. We needed more action at point guard when Jack M wasn’t going to be in. I had decided not to start Jack because he had missed the day before (for understandable reasons but still felt I should give the nod to a kid who’d been there). This meant I needed a starting point guard. My brainstorm was simple: I would start Scott at point. There was no reason to believe that he couldn’t do an excellent job.

So when Scott gets there I pull him aside and tell him that I need him to take one for the team and for him to play point. He tells me that he can’t do it. I tell him I’m not going to force him to do it and explain why I think he would be good. He still thinks he can’t. I apply a little more pressure but he stands firm that he can’t do it.

A big plus to this plan is that I wanted to have Dante, Lucas, and Scott all on the floor at the same time. I decide that I still want this threesome on the floor and so I put in Jack P as point, Noah or Gordie (can’t remember) in at the other guard, Lucas at wing, Dante at center and Scott at power forward.

Defensively, I tell Jack that he is to guard the kid the team has nicknamed “temper”. That he is not to worry about playing help defense but is instead not to leave his man. I am pretty confident if we take away him out of the game we’ll be in a far stronger position.

The early part of the game goes well for us. They come out in a zone clearly designed to take away inside shots. But that turns out not to be a problem as we are hot from the outside. Dante gets several open shots and he makes them scoring 6 points quickly for us. We have less luck as we try to force it into Scott inside.

While this cools down it does force them to guard us outside. We continue our patient ways. We are doing a nice half court offense, but I would prefer to be running more.

Overall the game goes well for us until the end of the third quarter. We had been up by 4 when they go on a run even taking a brief lead before we tie it back up to end the quarter. My speech at the end of the quarter is that we just saw the best that they had to offer. This turns out not to be entirely true. I have a good group of five out there, having made sure Tom, Gordie, and Noah all had played at least a quarter, but they still extend their lead. We have, however, taken their best guard out of the game as he just can’t stop crying so that’s something in our favor. The kid really hadn’t done anything wrong, but instead just seems to have cracked under the pressure. It was a shame to see.

Anyhow MP2 does manage to come out and take a lead of four. I call a time out with about 2 minutes to go. I explain we simply need two good possessions to tie the game. And bam we come out of the time out, score quickly, get the ball back after some good defense, and score again. Game is tied. A little seesawing and we then take the lead. We basically trade baskets for the rest of the game and we come out with a win.

These poor kids were crying. It was kind of sad really. They had played a great game, but we managed to squeak out the win. And we deserved it. While the game was close, I felt like we were not only the better team in general but had played better that day. We shook hands and were now on our way to the championship.