HP vs PL

When I arrive at the HP Rec Center I find that Henry and the twins are already there and that Ben has his boot on. I had called his house in the morning and talked to his mom. She says the doctor has said he should wear the boot as much as possible and while he could participate in playing basketball, practicing wasn’t a good idea for the moment. Ben assures me is just wearing his boot for now and will take it off to warm-up some. The three of us watch the 4B team play for a while, getting absolutely killed by PL’s 4B team. Most of their 4A team is there as well. I get a scouting report from the threesome who tell me that they’re big but don’t appear to be great shooters.

Unfortunately I am stuck doing administrative tasks for much of warm-up, so I don’t really get to see much of that. Even more unfortunately, I neglected to arrange someone to be our stat keeper ahead of time so I lack my normal detailed stats for this game.

The game begins with Ben, Jon, Henry, Zach, and Danny getting the start. I had deliberated whether it was fair to start Ben, as he hadn’t practiced on Saturday, and decided it was as he’d participated in our other practices. However, he won’t get another starting nod until he resumes practice, or the play-offs come around (if he’s earned it at that time). In my pregame speech I talked about how we shouldn’t get discouraged if they come out in a zone and we struggle at first, as we hadn’t practiced against a zone. I tell them to remember our offensive ideas of keeping the floor spaced, moving the ball around, and finding a smart shot, and we’d be fine. This came courtesy of what had happened earlier in the day with GL. Besides giving this coaching point I will also say that where I was uptight with GL I was relaxed and smiles with HP.

PL wins the tip and proceeds to have a 40 second possession to start the game, but fortunately this does not end in a basket, but instead a turnover for traveling. We then take the ball down and find a shot, all too quickly, which I’m not terribly happy with. After this inauspicious start, we are then off to the races. Our aggression kicks in, and PL is basically left stupefied as just take the ball from them, and I don’t mean steal I mean take, get multiple looks at our own basket, and force them to travel. At the end of the first quarter we’re up 10-2.

The second quarter goes fairly well until they start to pressure us a little and we break down. PL has momentum for most of the quarter, but we regain it at the end and actually extend our lead to 10, with a score of 19-9 at the half. I talk about how well we’re playing at half and said how when it started to seem like the gain was tilting towards them, we grabbed the momentum back and actually extended our lead.

The third quarter is basically back and forth. I fool around a lot with who is taking up the ball for us, and this only increases in the 3rd. Going into the 4th we’re still up by 10. I comment at the start of the 4th quarter, how we have a comfortable lead, but not one that they can’t come back from. We start of the quarter fairly well. But then their pressure gets to us and we make stupid mistakes and turn the ball over. However, with 3 minutes left we’re still up by 7, so I put in some players who hadn’t played so well to give them some extra playing time. And before you know it there are 45 seconds left and we’re up by 5, but it feels like we’re up by 1. I tell them if we can make 1 more basket the game’s over. Unfortunately we don’t make the basket and PL comes back to score a quick basket. I am forced to call another timeout and put back in Gavin and Jack A, who’d played very well for us, to make sure we pull out the victory. And we do, thanks to Zach basically getting the ball past half court and then waiting for them to foul him. After a couple trips to the line, and a stolen possession when we apply a slight press, we pull out a 3 point victory.

Overall, I feel very happy. I’m happy with our aggression. I am happy with how well we rebounded against a larger team. I am happy that two of our larger problems were the fact that our ballhandler seemed to just fall down about 4 or 5 times during the game, and that we made stupid traveling violations, when we were unpressured in the back court. As I said to the players on the bench when this happened in the 3rd quarter, “I don’t have a drill to work on not falling down, so we just have to stop doing that.” Hopefully it was just a freak occurrence. Though one could argue it was also related to the stupid travel violations in that while trying to play fast we weren’t playing in control. Our speed and aggression were what won us the game, so I want to be careful not to discourage that. It’ll be a balancing act, but I suppose that’s why they pay me the big bucks.

I’m also happy with the playing time given to all of the players. While I don’t have statistics to support it, I feel like all of the players got substantial, and fairly equal, playing time. However, this was helped by the fact that Josh continued to be sick and so while he played his time was more limited, meaning I had to worry about 10.5 players playing rather than a full 11. I continue to gain a better understanding of my players, which is a good thing.

Our lack of a real PG is, more than anything, my concern at the moment. While we have kids who can dribble, quite well in fact, we don’t have a kid who can dribble and see the court. It’s pretty frustrating to go from having a team who has half the team who could legitimately play point to a team where there isn’t even one kid who I really trust to bring up the ball. I hope to be able to help develop the skills of a couple of our better dribblers but the experiences of other coaches tells me that I shouldn’t expect too much on this front.

Adam – I tried him at PG and his decision making just isn’t there. Not surprisingly he wasn’t any better at in-boundng the ball. His man to man defense was actually better than I expected, which was a good thing. He also scored a couple of baskets which is nice. For the time being I would place him in a group of 3 who are just a tad below others when out there.

Ben – Played unspectacularly. His defense was very good, as I expected, but he was non-presence under the boards and on offense. I hope to see this change. I am also worried about how his progress will be limited with his foot. Obviously not a lot I can do there but I hope he doesn’t become frustrated if others start to surpass him as he doesn’t progress as quickly due to limited chances to play and practice both during our times and at school.

Danny – Danny was a disappointment. To his credit he made two early free throws for us, which was great. However, his man got by him a few times on defense, and his decision making with the ball was quite poor. On the better side, he did have a good sense of where to be to help break a press.

Gavin – Gavin had a very strong game. It’s going to be hard to break him of his desire to be around the ball, as he constantly was wanting to bring the ball up, or even in bound it. But he did a nice job for us underneath both in terms of getting rebounds (particularly offensive ones) and in guarding their bigger players (who were nearly a full head taller than him). He got fouled multiple times and unfortunately went 2-7 from the free throw line, which is in keeping with how he does in practice. If he’s going to be drawing those fouls, helping get him to around 50% seems like it would be a boost for us.

Henry – Henry’s a gamer. However, he struggled offensively against the much bigger PL team. His man to man also wasn’t quite as good as I expected. At the end of Saturday’s practice I was talking about playing time and such and Henry said at one point how he had a great idea. I told him to share it with me after practice. He did and it was basically the idea of calling our press “Kentucky”. So during a time out in the 4th I let Henry explain what Kentucky was. It was a nice moment for him.

Jacob – You’d have not known the kid was out there. His man didn’t really get the ball when he was on defense, but this was more because of our good guard play than his defense. And on offense he was a complete non-presence. The difference between the kind of center play Jacob provides and what Gavin provides is substantial. I also place him in that bottom 3 group.

Jack A – Turns out that Jack’s brother goes to the school I teach at, though Jack does not. His brother is a very cute 1st grader, who looks nothing like Jack. Jack is one of the stars of the team. His defense was fantastic. His ability to drive to the basket was equally good. I’d like it a little better if he made more of his shots when he drove to the basket, but he was a definite spark plug, and it was when I put him in during the first quarter that we went from playing pretty well to just dominating the other team.

Jack B – An unsung hero of the game. He was open a lot, due to a good sense of the court, and it was frustrating for me, as our bad play at point prevented him from getting the ball as much as I’d have liked. He was also excellent about setting screens, both on and off the ball. I made sure to tell him how what he was doing wouldn’t show up as a statistic but was really helpful to us winning the game. I think his play earned him a start at our next game.

Jon – Unlike his brother, he was a nice inside presence for us, grabbing quite a few rebounds and playing his bigger men quite well. Overall, I was very happy with his play.

Josh – As I said above he was still recovering from his illness. Poor kid actually cried after the game because he’d been sick and not able to play his best. As I’ve mentioned before he’s got some real strengths, but some real weaknesses as well. Hopefully the weaknesses will be improved on over the course of the season to make him a better player.

Zach – Along with Jack A the star of the game, accounting for 10 of our 30 points, and quite a few steals. He could, and did, dribble through their press. Unfortunately, he does it with his head down and so there were quite a few times where he could have passed ahead for an easy basket. I really would like him to be our PG, and had him there extensively during the game. But his head down dribbling means something needs to change, otherwise we’re going to be in big trouble.

So overall a nice first victory, and one I’m glad we didn’t give away at the end. We did get a little tired in the 4th which is troubling to me since with only one practice a week I’m limited in terms of what I can do in that regard at the moment. What we need to do at practice on Saturday is pretty clear:
1. Work on offense that isn’t just Jack and Zach driving to the basket. They did it well against the man we saw, but against a good zone we’re going to be like deer in the headlights.
2. Work on our poise in general and against a press in particular.

We play NF on Saturday. This is the NF2 team from last year that were a group of 3rd graders. I anticipate they’ll be a tough team to play and am excited to see how we do.