GL vs PL

Yet another double header day of games for me, and once again GL has the first game. We will be facing PL, the first team of the season who we’re unfamiliar with. In an unusual move for me I ask for the team to be there a half hour in advance. Unfortunately the team isn’t all prompt so we do a bit of a shoot around. Finally, I have the team go into our meeting space and play for them the Zone Offense videos I’ve created on my laptop. Overall, attention is fair for this. The bad part comes when at the end of the game I forget my laptop at the school. So far it hasn’t been found, but I’m still keeping my fingers crossed.

In the pregame talk I stress how this is PL’s firt game of the season so I would like to come out and take them by surprise. And overall this is what we do. Or would have done if we could make a lay-up. We miss just an appalling amount of somewhat open inside shots. I start with a line-up of Tom at point, David, Brian, Jack P (playing post), and Justin. At about 4 minutes in, I rotate this group out in favor of Cameron, Andrew, Scott, Lucas, and Dante with Scott playing point. As I said both groups do fairly well but we can’t make our shots. We finish the first up 6-5.

Things improve in the second quarter. I give some reminders about how we want to play defense and we don’t allow as many easy drives. David is still trying to break the press single handedly but when that doesn’t happen we actually manage to get some good looks. Further, by their speeding up the tempo of the game they start to play sloppily and we create some turnovers which we convert into baskets. We’re up 17-12 heading into half. One thing I was particularly proud of is quality minutes everyone received in the first half. This gives me wiggle room for the second half to either give our weaker players more time, if we pull away, or our stronger players the bulk of the time, if it remains close.

At half I congratulate them on a well played half. We then have a poor 3rd, or rather they have a good 3rd which we helped them to achieve. They do a good job of really cutting off our first pass and convert a lot of those into some easy baskets. We enter the 4th quarter down 27-25. And it’s time for Justin to take over. He rattles off 6 quick points, with a couple of other scoring as well, to give us a 7 point lead. PL cuts it down to 4, with 40 seconds left, after a successful 3 point shot, but we end up with a 43-37 victory.

We did MUCH better in this game than in the last game. PL really struggled with the tight traveling calls our refs call and unlike last week we did a much better job of avoiding this. I had stressed this during continuous motion during our practices and the reminder clearly paid off. We also did much better on the boards this week, despite once again being the smaller team. While we struggled in the 3rd, we made the necessary adjustments for the 4th. I feel like we were the better team and deserved the victory, unlike last week.

Taking a look at our players:

Andrew – He did a great job of helping us to beat our press in the 2nd by being down court but close enough to receive the pass. He had a few open looks at the basket as a result but didn’t score. However, he did find a nice jumper in the second to give him some points.

Brian – Had a couple of nice assists by getting the ball into the post, but was otherwise unremarkable.

Cameron – You could have forgotten he was on the court for all that he or his man touched the ball. I didn’t notice on defense if this was due to skill on his part or lack of skill on the person who he was guarding part.

Dante – The drop-off in rebounds between him and Justin continues to be noticeable. Dante had 1 rebound in 12 minutes to Justin’s 8 in 16 minutes. Dante does play good man to man, which is nice, as his man was out on the wing quite a bit even and Dante played him perfectly. But when Dante’s in the game I need to count on others to get that board, which is also a bit disappointing from a center. He did have a nice shot in the 4th quarter from farther out, so it was nice to see him regain a little of his offensive touch.

David – David is still the best player on the court most days. But the difference isn’t as great as it once was, and he hasn’t realized that things he was once able to do don’t work for him anymore. For instance, despite my not playing him at point that much, his 11 turnovers were nearly as many as the 13 the rest of the team committed. He continues to be a weak link on press break. I’m confident that with some coaching David will be able to continue to maximize his talents in a positive way for the team.

Jack M – When I did the complete swap-out in the first quarter Jack said how it was embarrassing that he was the only one not going in. I said, that with 11 players that’s going to happen to one person, but I did feel for him. I gave him a little crunch time play as a salve though when it got to the very end of the game I pulled him in favor of Dante’s free throw ability, and Jack felt frustrated at this. I didn’t play Jack at point which I think was the right decision, and a reason why our overall turnovers were down. However, if he’s not playing point he’s suddenly having to compete with a bunch of other players for minutes and so finding him time is going to be something I’ll have to pay attention to.

Jack P – He looked really good. His real skill comes in driving the baseline, rather than from the top of the key. Where as last year he wouldn’t make those shots, this year he has been. I asked him to play post and he responded with a solid 4 rebounds. I played him the whole 4th quarter. If he continues to shoot as well as he has been he’s going to make a strong case for being just as indispensable as David or Justin come crunch time.

Justin – Speaking of Justin, he continues to be the biggest reason why we’ve won this year. His ability to dribble, and do so from the left side (being a lefty) just catches people off guard. PL had to take their biggest player, and best rebounder, off the floor in the 4th after Justin dribbled by a couple of times, so that mismatch He hasn’t shown an ability to score from the right (I can’t remember a basket of his on the right side), so that’ll be something we’ll want to work on to improve his overall game. He is, in his quite way, our best player by far at this point in the season.

Lucas – Lucas hasn’t shown that explosiveness and spark that had me ready to have him be the centerpiece of our offense were the triplets not to have returned. I wonder if this is because he’s not starting, not getting into a rhythm or what. I think I might let him play a consecutive quarter and see if he just needs time to get into the flow. Otherwise I’d have to think that with his continuing to be short, he’s going to have to change his game, and work with him on making that transition.

Scott – Scott’s been my biggest disappointment this year. In fact he’s been my only disappointment. He’s been unfocused and unmotivated. I asked him in the 3rd quarter to go in and play point. He whined about playing point. So I said, no problem and had Lucas go in and play point instead. However, having made my point I did sub him in a minute or so of game time later and not at point. I’m going to tell him pretty bluntly that he will be a regular starter again when I see him putting in the effort and giving the attention that I expect. I feel he’ll respond well to this direct approach. That said, he rebounded nicely (pun intended) from the poor post game he had against LS, with some tough defense and 8 boards, though his 0-5 from the floor, with many if not all of those being lay-ups, was a little discouraging.

Tom – I’ve really done a disservice to Tom. I started him and played him a little in the first 3 quarters. Then the 4th came around, and I knew I needed to play him some more, and I didn’t. Tom has, by far, the fewest minutes on the team right now. He doesn’t deserve that Granted he’s not doing a whole lot for the team when he’s out there, but he deserves the chance to play. We play WK next and I worry, given that he already has confidence problems, about giving him some substantial playing time against a team we’re going to struggle against. However, in either the WK or LV game I am going to find some substantial playing time for him and I’m going to make sure not to short change him going forward.

I like where we're at heading into our game against WK, who if you recalled absolutley demolished us when we played them in a scrimmage last spring. If we can play them tough, win or lose, it'll show our 3-0 start is no fluke and that we are a team to contend with.

HP update will come tomorrow.