2 Game Weekend

It was a successful weekend.

Saturday saw us dismantle GV just as we had last week. I had challenged the team to allow fewer points scored and they did. Mason had a particularly good game scoring 6 points. Mason’s taken only 5 shots this season and has made 4 of them. Guess he has gotten the “take smart shots” message. The game was actually pretty close at half, 14-9. I told the team they needed to push the ball up the court more and we scored 14 3rd quarter points to safely put the game out of reach.

Today was more of a struggle. First our opponents were HUGE. They had a kid at least 6 inches taller than our tallest players. Our team was pretty intimidated by the size. They also used a very aggressive trapping zone. Our team did a good job of beating the trap, but had trouble making the shots in the first half that we got. In fact there was no score for virtually the entire first quarter and we entered half down 8-5.

We had much less trouble in the second half. We never had more than a 7 point lead, and really basically just maintained a 5 point lead for the 4th quarter. It got tense at times and the game was quite physical so it felt close. It was good for the team to win a close game, something which our first three victories didn’t provide. I’d still like to see us come from behind in the 4th and win, as that would show another layer of toughness and resolve, but not being in a position to have to come from behind is a good thing overall.

A big credit for today’s victory goes to Leo who got very hot in the 3rd quarter and made a bunch of open shots, the same kind we’d been missing earlier, Michael who made two clutch free throws towards the end of the game, and Seth who shot better than his season shooting percentage of less than 25% (all of them 10 footers or less), each whom contributed 8 points. The team as a whole deserves credit for being active on the boards and causing their three most talented players to get into foul trouble by being aggressive. The final score was 28-25.