DF Game; Catching up to Today

Another long break between updates, though that has been a function of schedule as much as anything.

We had a very disappointing loss to DF on Dec 7th, 31-18. They jumped out to an early lead and were up after the first quarter by 5. We then closed to with-in 3 at half and 1 at the start of the 4th quarter. Unfortunately we fell apart in the 4th quarter as they scored 14 points, nearly as much as they scored the rest of the game. The real problem came after they made the first of thee 3s, which put them up by 5. The team just fell apart and while I called a TO fairly quickly, the run continued after the time out. Some of this was lucky shooting as our opponents shot 5 of 6 from 3 point distance. Some of this was the fact that our team struggled mightily against the zone and didn’t create turnovers, as the 18 points was by far the fewest points we had scored.
The bad news was compounded by the fact that the tournament we were supposed to play in the following weekend was cancelled. This meant, with winter break thrown-in, we will have gone 5 weeks when we play another game tomorrow.
The good news is that I was able to schedule a scrimmage yesterday against the 4th grade boys, which have a really fantastic team. The bad news is that if we’d have been keeping score, I think we’d have lost. They basically have forgotten several aspects of the offense. The good news is that the one weakness that I had noticed at DF, and had subsequently focused on, cutting to the basket and passing to those cutters, is hugely improved and was happening several times during the scrimmage. The bad news is that more fundamental aspects, such as rotation and spacing, was weak/forgotten. Hopefully there will be time before the game tomorrow to run through our basic offense.

And honestly if our basic offense were all that was struggling I’d be OK. But our defense has been weak, and continues to be weak. They seem to get the idea of needing to help on defense, but they seem to think they can do this by walking there, so the help gets there too late so a shot can be had.

Even this, while unacceptable, could be countered somewhat if the team could press well. However, the team seems unable to trap. At Monday’s practice we even ran a 3 on 5 drill, and the 5 defensive players were nearly hopeless in stopping the 3 offensive players. It basically means that if we get behind in a game we’re going to have to rely on our porous defense to make stops, rather than in creating turnovers. I have installed a trapping zone, which works fairly well, but I refuse to use that just to create wins. Not to mention it would lose its effectiveness if we played it for too long. It will be a 4th quarter change of pace defense. So basically let’s hope we don’t down by more than say 6 points cause between the lack of defense, lack of press, and lack of mental toughness, we’re in trouble.
Which brings us to tomorrow. It’s frustrating since I still don’t have a good grasp of how hard our opponents will be yet since, our opponent, WK, has played to and beaten DF, who just stomped us, and lost to KW, who we beat, though not decisively. So perhaps they’re of about equal talent to us. I do know that if we played the way we played yesterday we won’t stand a chance. Hopefully we’ll be able to kick it into a different gear. We’ve kind of stalled in our progress since about the 3rd game. I’m hoping that as we review and refine we’ll be able to take our play into a new gear for the last two months of the season.

Team Overview

It’s been a while since I’ve updated simply because with Thanksgiving we’ve not had a game in a while. We have a game tomorrow, but I thought that it would be a good chance to go kind of give a state of the team a third of the way through the season, especially because I’ve been briefer in my write-ups to date.
In alphabetical order:

Alex: The kid still hasn’t figure out how to make a shot in a game. He does it practice, in game situations. In competitive situations. In rough situations. But can’t come through in a game. That’s OK, because he’s been solid defensively and has consistently rebounded. Rebounding has been a team weakness, though I’ve started incorporating a simple throw the ball up against the backboard for the next person to rebound into our pregame warm-up and that seems to have led to some better results.

Austin: He’s definitely more comfortable not being the focal point of the team, AKA not the PG. However, when Josh was gone for a weekend he stepped into the role and preformed adequately. He does a particularly good job of being willing to pass the ball up the court. He’s averaging over 3 assists a game, which is a lot considering our team averages 30 points a game. Additionally, in our last three games (two of them where he was playing point) he should have had at least 2 more assists each game if a player hadn’t missed a wide open lay-up from a pass of his.

Grant: He is pretty consistently below average across the board in skills. He’s probably #9 on our depth chart in terms of talent. He is, however, a great member of the team in terms of attitude and humor.

Josh: Against the large KW team we played we definitely missed his ball handling, which is funny considering he’s the 2nd shortest kid on our team. However, the kid hasn’t been at practice, in forever. As in not since November 17th. When his mom called me to tell me he wouldn’t be there Friday (he was originally supposed to be there Monday but his plane was delayed) she said he was quite worried about playing time. I didn’t reassure her. Overall our team is definitely better with him than without him, but with his not having played for so long I have no idea what kind of physical condition he’s in.

Leo: The kid gives his all that’s for sure. He is on the floor an amazing amount of the time diving after balls. He came through huge against KW which was great to see. He grew a lot last season and perhaps we’ll see him continue to grow this season into a good player.

Mason: He’s made nearly every shot he’s taken this season, which is great. Most games he is a bit of a nothing on the court. He plays hard and works hard, so he’s definitely learning and growing. However, as the shortest and scrawniest kid on the team he’s got to learn how to play bigger than his size and how to make sure bigger and stronger kids. I’ve been working with him, giving some tips, and hopefully they work. Nice story though. He’s also playing in house league and said he started telling me about the first practice: “Everyone just stands around on our offense. The point guard gets a screen from the center and either shoots or passes to the center. But everyone else just kind of does nothing. You’re such a better coach.” I explained that considering I was being paid to coach I should be better. One advantage though I hadn’t really thought of with the Read and React is that even if a kid isn’t getting a lot of touches they probably still feel involved because they’re always moving and doing something that has value.

Matthew: Our smartest player. As an example, we were doing “Bull in the Ring” where one player is in the post and has to receive passes from his teammates on the perimeter, all while being defended 1 on 1. His score, thanks to smart movement, was nearly half his teams points. Had an unfortunate injury which kept him out our past three games. But he’s fully recovered now. While he doesn’t add much on offense, he is a tenacious defender, especially for his size.

Michael: He leads the team in steals and is able to convert many of those steals into fast breaks, which leads to points, and so he is also our team’s leading scorer. He is, along with Josh and Alex, one of 3 players who is clearly a step above the others.

Quentin: The kid has no jump shot. Like none at all. Every shot is a set shot. He’s a very high percentage shooter though. If he can learn to shoot a lay-up I’ll have done some good coaching this season. Sadly his defense is weak so he’s more of an end of the bench sort of guy.

Seth: His shooting percentage is abysmal. If he learns to keep his head up when he moves his shooting percentage will rise. This is a funny criticism, because he’s the kid most likely to pass it way up the court on a fast break. He’s been a hard worker and I think has definitely improved so far this season.

Overall we’re 4-1 and tied for first place with WM (3-0), the team who beat us. We’re also the only team who has played more than 3 games. Every team we’ve beaten has a losing record, as does our opponent tomorrow, so it’s really hard to tell if we’ve just beaten a bunch of bad teams and are a good team, have beaten a bunch of bad teams and are an average team, or have beaten some not so bad teams and are a good team. Our offense is looking better and better every week which is good. Our defense hasn’t progressed at quite the same speed and will be more of a focus as our offense sets to go into refinement mode rather than learning mode.

I think my coaching overall has been solid. I haven’t done as much shooting instruction or breaking down and reinforcing individual fundamentals as I would like, which is bad. I need to recommit myself to those things because they’re important and deserve time. I think I’ve handled the players well while also not making myself obsessed. Hopefully more good things will come.

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.

Practice + Game

The signs did not portend for a good game yesterday. It wasn’t because of Friday’s practice. Friday’s practice was a good practice. We had 7 players suited up, Alex was out of town, Grant was injured (more about this shortly), and Michael was not going to be there. We did our shooting continuous motion and frankly there shooting? Not so hot. We also did a concentration drill, where they had sheets with numbers randomly displayed from 1-100. I would announce a number and they would then have to find the next number, cross it off, and so on for 45 seconds. The catch was the second time we did it, they had a partner who was allowed to distract them as they were doing the sheet. Fun was had. I think there is also value in this sort of activity so we’ll likely come back to it. We also did some 3 person work on the fundamentals of our offense. The biggest focus was on rebounding. We did a couple drills working on jumping for the ball as well as judging the angle of the shot. Unlike some previous Friday practices the energy was there.

The first bad sign was that Alex was not going to be there. Along with Seth Alex is one of two kids that has been rebounding. He is also one of our better scorers. The second bad sign was Grant’s injury. He suffers from a condition (whose name I forget) which basically causes pain due to bones growing faster than the muscles. He was having a flare up and this was still inflamed so no Grant yesterday. This was somewhat expected, at least after Friday. The third bad sign was when Matthew’s mom calls to let me know that he had a minor procedure done and would be unable to play. So now I’m down to 7. Seven is still workable. And to their credit both Matthew and Grant attended the game. The last bad sign was when we only had five players to start the game. Leo and Quentin were not there. I figured they got lost. But that put us at 5 players.

Last year I would have been upset at this. This year I’m trying to feel the Zen. And I tried to impart this on the team.

And the good news is that I needn’t have worried. The other team came out in man to man. Only they had no help defense. They also completely overplayed their person, not staying between them and the basket. And so we had an obscene number of easy lay-ups. They also didn’t understand the idea of stopping the ball on a fast break so we had a bunch more of those. By the time Leo and Quentin finally arrived in the second quarter, after I’d given up all hope of seeing them, we were up by a lot. We even held them to just 1 point in the second quarter. I had to hold the team back in the second half. We coasted to an easy 37-20 victory. It was nice because every player there got to score a basket. Michael destroy them in the second half with 8 points, almost all off fast breaks. Josh also showed an ability to drive past them nearly at will.

We play them again Saturday. More than anything I feel bad for the other team. I wonder how much practice time they’d had. Their basic man to man was SO off that I have to think not much. They also never even attempted to press us (for obvious reasons we didn’t attempt to press them). Everyone feels good after a big win. The goal will be to working hard this week at practice as we play this same team again and also play KW. KW is notable because it is the team which upset this group of kids in the first round of the playoffs. I know they’ll be excited about that game.

Game 2 + Practice

Well another game and another practice are in the books. Fortunately, Sunday saw us win 28-21 bringing our record to 1-1. We played well, with Alex leading us towards victory with 10 points, including 4 of 7 shooting from the line. We were up the whole game, by as much as 10. The real key of the game was transition points. On a fast break we made our shots, they didn’t. Our rebounding still is our weakest link, giving the other team way too many 2, 3, even 4 shot possessions.

One big note is that at last Friday’s practice Austin told me he preferred playing the two with Josh in at one. Our ball handling skills aren’t all that strong this year, so this was not news I wanted to hear. This meant Michael suddenly became our back-up point. Michael struggled being asked to play both point at times, center at times, as they had a very athletic big man and so when Alex was out Michael offered us the best match-up, as well as 3, his “natural” spot. I had told Austin that we were going to need him at point on Friday. I tried it on Sunday and frankly we still need Austin at point. Austin isn’t going to be the playmaker Josh is, but he’s also not going to turn the ball over, and that is quite important.

We had a good practice yesterday. We reviewed footage from the game which I had put together and was something I think the team enjoyed. It wasn’t a highlight reel as much as taking a close look at a few plays. We spent some time working on rebounding skills, but the vast majority was spent on teaching proper shooting mechanics. In particular worked on using the legs to power the shot, and also worked on the release and follow through, with-out the ball. This part will be especially helpful for Quentin whose release is flat and awkward. It wasn’t the most thrilling of lessons, but it was fundamentals which are needed for future growth. It laid the ground work.

A note of concern is Leo who has been injured or not feeling well for what seems like half our practices, yet feeling perfect for both our games. I honestly can’t tell if the kid has a lingering injury and is fighting through it or is trying to get out of practicing. I had started him Sunday in hopes that this would motivate him if it was a motivation issue. Yesterday saw the same inability to practice. I then talked with him expressing my concern over his injuries and telling him how it would be better if he didn’t really practice at all this week or play on Sunday in order to give his body time to recover than to keep trying to play while not giving his body a chance to heal. We’ll see if that approach works.

Practice Report

Week two of practices is in the books. Overall, I was pleased with my coaching this week, compared to last week’s so-so job. That said, I really hope that the team we play isn’t with the same coach (so they’re starting from scratch like I am) and not have a year’s worth of common experiences up on us. While the group understands our offense in theory, in practice, not nearly as much. And their defense is aggressive, which I like, but very unrefined meaning if they’re more athletic than we are, we could be in real trouble.

Anyhow, Monday I gave my “quiz” based on the mailing I had sent out before the season started. The results? Not pretty. I gave virtually the same quiz last year, but with one more section (as I had taken out offensive rules, knowing that this would be our early season focus and not really knowing what would be useful to put in there). And the team last year got, as I recall, about as many questions wrong, with 2 more players answering and 1 less section. It was the first time that the team hadn’t impressed me. For every 4 questions they got wrong, it was worth 1 suicide, though every player was allowed 1 “free” wrong answer. Josh, bless his injured foot, actually got every question right. This left them with 13 suicides to run over the course of practice. In reality they ran only 10.5 which was still a bunch. This was about tone setting as much as anything. Reading over some of the posts from last year at this time, it definitely seems like this team is easier to coach than what I had last year. Whether this is because of the kids, or me (I resolved to start tough) or a combo, I can’t say.

Other events at the practice, including running a fast break drill where I emphasized offensive spacing. We also did some work on our offense, introducing passing for the first time. The rule for passing, which is cut to the basket, is simple. There is a whole other layer of passing, which I didn’t introduce. Just getting the simplest of the simple down is our goal for now.

At Tuesday’s one hour practice, I actually let them scrimmage for half an hour. First we did some fundamental work and I taught them 3 inbounds plays, though two are really just varations on each other. All this was done in the first 15 minutes of practice. I was quite pleased with how effectively I ran that time. Next we did some Animal Rebounding. They were happy to be doing the drill which is always nice to see.

In order to have 10 people I brought in Leonardo’s brother, Rodrigo, who is in 6th grade and has tried out (and been cut) the last two years. I did a lot of stopping in order to remind them of various points. There was a lot of extra movement, people were moving cause they felt like it rather than in response to the ball handler, thus defeating the purpose “Read and React”. In good news there was one sweet play where Matthew drove, drawing the defense, and then hit Quentin, who was moving like he should, with a pass resulting in an easy lay-up.

I also did something of debatable wisdom. While practicing the offense we had practiced it as a “5 out” meaning all five players start off outside the 3 point arc. During the scrimmage I made them practice as a 4 out 1 in, meaning we would have 1 player, the Center, who would stay closer to the basket. In the long run we need to run the 4 out 1 in, because Alec, our starting center, is one of our biggest strengths. And to execute on the strengths we need him in the post. Of course not really having practiced this formation, which has its own slightly different spacing, is where the questionable aspect comes in. I think while Alec is in on Sunday we’ll mostly play 4 out 1 in, while playing 5 out, most of the rest of the time.

Overall I think we’re in OK shape. Just about any result would not surprise me, from blow out defeat to solid victory. My big concern is point guard, where we’re weak for the game due to some bad circumstances. Taking a look at our roster here’s my impression heading into the first game:

Alec: Disappeared on offense in our scrimmage. That’s not good. I don’t know if it was the players he was playing with, as Rodrigo who he was matched up against got plenty of looks, him, or the fact that he was being guarded by a kid taller and stronger than him. Rodrigo is very raw and was no doubt fouling and such, which frustrated him. I handled his frustration in a “deal with the problem rather than whining” sort of way which is very atypical for me, and in retrospect not exactly the tone I should have used, even if the message was right. If we win, I suspect it’s going to be on his back.

Austin: He’s going to be our starting point guard. His being a lefty should throw off their defense somewhat since it means he’ll go left rather than right. Of course he doesn’t have too much of a right so after that initial plus, the other team could do some real damage forcing him left. The team nominated him as the best shooter, when I offered to let them out of some suicides if someone could make a basket, which I found interesting and not something I’d have pegged him for. He’s salt of the earth nice, a kid with a near constant smile on his face.

Grant: Always thanks me for my time. He seemed to do well with the offense until it was a game and then he promptly started to forget to execute it. I still like his court sense, but he’s going to have to figure out how to make it work with-in the structure. His skills are pretty unremarkable to this point.

Josh: I hope he recovers soon. His commitment to the team, even when injured, has been fantastic. He’s, by his own admission, not much of a shooter. But he will be our starting PG when he is healthy, since he’s able to drive and pass. I don’t need shooters. I need people who can help us get open baskets.

Leonardo: He’s out of shape, I think, rather than lazy. I still see the potential there, especially on defense. My goal, and I have no clue how successful I am going to be with implementing this, is to use him for short rotations, 2 minutes or so rather than 4 or so. Hopefully not less playing time, just different playing time. I think this will allow him to be successful, especially on defense, which is my A #1 area of concern. I plan on using him as our primary back-up to Alec, so the short stints could be a good thing as it would allow me to rest Alec as well.

Mason: I’m not sure if I noted this previously, but he’s the only kid on the team who wasn’t on the team last year. He’s fast and has endurance. Monday as we were running our last suicides, he was basically the fastest kid on the court for the first suicide, and he was BY FAR, the fastest kid on the court for the last one. He’s pretty insecure about himself, so I’ve been working hard to give him some legitimate confidence. That said he made a lot mistakes playing PG in our scrimmage. He had a tendency to pick up his trouble when pressure was first starting so that he wouldn’t get the ball stolen from him. This caused more trouble than good. He came up to me after practice and asked how he did. I had him tell me how he thought he did and then gave him the general pointer, don’t pick up your dribble, as well as some advice about how to avoid doing it (using his body to protect the ball, a skill he definitely has in the abstract).

Michael: Sadly Michael won’t be at our game Sunday, most likely. He really wants to be there, and in theory he should be able, but as I’ve told him and his parents, it’s just fine if he’s not there. I’d want him there since he’d be my preference for starting PG with Josh out. His natural spot is as a 3. The kid thinks very highly of himself, almost to the point of arrogance, but he also understands that arrogance doesn’t help the team so he tries saying the right things. It’s a weird combination. I’m trying an experiment where the kids can nominate a player based on hard work and improvement at practice and to my surprise he got 3 votes, the most of any kid (Alec and Matthew got two, Mason, Grant, and Austin 1).

Matthew: He doesn’t look pretty the way he plays, but he gets stuff done. I’m certainly going to work on improving his fundamentals, but I can’t argue with results. Based on the fact that I think he understands the offense the best of anyone at this point, I will be trying him out at PG.

Quentin: The kid most likely to come out of the game for taking a silly shot. He thinks he has a much better jumper than he has. He’ll also take a shot if he can. I noticed the same tendency last year. Taking bad shots is one of the few things I will take a kid out of a game for doing. I don’t think he’s quite bought into me or my way of doing things yet. Hopefully I’ll win him over, especially when we start working on jump shots. If I can help him there, that should go a long way to helping him, not only because he’ll annoy me less, but also because it should increase his buy-in.

Seth: I think I want him to be better than he is. I want him to be an athletic 4, as he’s got a pretty good outside jumper and he’s got the size to be a big. Right now, however, he’s kind of soft. Oh and he’s also lacking some of the athleticism one would need to be an athletic 4. Still a starter at the moment. He will also likely see some time at 5.

The good news is that the drop-off in talent from 1 to 10 isn’t steep. Of course that can be the bad news as well, and interestingly enough I do perceive a definite split in talent from our top 3 (Alec, Josh, Michael) and the other 7, but even that isn’t all that huge.

One final note. One of my goals this season is to remain more sane as a coach. I have worried that this means I won’t put in the effort needed to be successful. I am proud to say that when I’ve needed to be focused on basketball I’ve been focused on basketball. Otherwise I’ve put it aside. If I maintain my sanity I will be a better coach.

First 2 practices

Well we are two practices into our season. Sort of. Yesterday, we had only four kids. More on that soon.

As I did last year with GL, before our first practice I sent out an information packet. This year I changed it up a bit. I shortened the defensive section, eliminated the offensive section, because of a new system I’m trying there, and added a goal setting page. I think this mailing really helps to set a tone for the season. All of the kids except Grant and Michael remember their goal setting sheet.

At the first practice we started by going over team rules and expectations. This took about 15 minutes, though there was interaction and questions in there so it wasn’t just me talking. I still wish I could figure out a way to impart the same information but not do it in fifteen minutes. The way I do it works, but I would love if there was a way that worked better.

The Sunday before our first practice I called everyone to remind them of the practice time and place. I learn then that Josh, our anticipated point guard and probably one of the two best players on the team, is going to miss practice with a foot injury. Before Friday’s practice, I learn that this foot injury is more likely something with the growth plate putting him out at least two weeks.

After the intro talk we did our continuous motion exercise with dribbling. Continuous motion is my version of conditioning. The idea that the players are (obviously) continuously in motion, though I always incorporate basketball skills with it. This CM is the most traditional one I do where players do laps, using both right and left hands. At the end I do some sort of partner passing, for Monday’s practice we did bounce passing. The group managed to go 8 and a half minutes before they were spent, which wasn’t too bad for a first practice, though less than the 10-15 I think a team needs to be able to do to be really effective. There were also certain kids who were either plainly out of shape or just lazy. The trick is for me to figure out which is which.

Next we had a water break. But before the water break started I gave everyone a water bottle. One of my goals this season is to run a tighter practice. I want to make sure I’m always 100% prepared, as I had some practices last season with GL where I had a practice skeleton but that was it. With one team to coach vs two I am not going to tolerate that from myself. So to help run a tighter practice, I want to cut down on the water break time, but not cut down on the amount of water drunk. By giving them water bottles, I hope to avoid the drinking fountain bottleneck that occurs otherwise.

Back from water break we did our Fundamental 5. This part of practice is there to make sure that in the hustle and bustle of the season the simplest fundamentals are still taught. It’s called Fundamental 5 because the idea is to spend five minutes or so on it. Just long enough to teach or review a skill not so long as to be boring.

Following this I started to introduce our offense. The bad news was that I made a mistake. As the offense is new to me, I mixed up the passing fundamental (which wasn’t our focus) and the penetration fundamental (which was). Fortunately, the mix-up wasn’t too severe and at the second practice I explained I’d “adjusted” the offense based on what I saw. In a case like this where I’ve already built up some credibility I would admit my mistake, but as the players are still learning whether they can trust me or not as a coach I decided this was the route to go.

The offense we’ll be using this year is called the Read and React. The basic idea is to teach players what they should be doing on the court based on reading what the ball handler does. There is a structure to the offense, but there are no plays. I’ve always liked structured offense and this offense simply takes many of the concepts I had been trying to teach and codifies it in a simple and easily understood way. That’s the good news. The bad news is that because there is a formal system, rather than my “rules” there is a lot more stuff to learn. And for our first game I don’t think they’ll have learned everything. More accurately, while they will have been taught much of what they will need to know, I can’t expect them to have mastered it.

As we were going through this I made an even bigger mistake. I had asked them to have some man to man defense. Except the 4 players played zone. And while I was knew something wasn’t quite right with the defense, I was too honed in on the defense to think about what it was until I was driving home. Whoops.

Following our offensive work we played some dribble knockaway which they definitely enjoyed. Following this we did “the human knot” team building exercise. The group worked remarkably well together and were able to figure it out very quickly for a group of 5th grade boys. I feel like we did something else at practice, but my notes aren’t with me as I type this up. All in all it was a good first practice from them, less than stellar on my part.

At Friday’s practice, I knew going into it that 4 of the 10 players would be missing due to a birthday party. Josh’s dad emailed me with the injury update so that was 5. I get a call about 45 minutes before practice from Leonoardo’s mother telling me he fell and is it ok if he misses practice. What we can do at a practice with 5 vs 4 is dramatically different, but I do excuse him. I wonder about the injury since Leonardo was one of the kids who was either out of shape or lazy, but what can you do? Hopefully it was a legit injury but he’s alright, if that makes sense.

At the practice I start very upbeat and explain what a great practice we’re going to have with only 4 players. This is the end of my enthusiasm not because they were doing anything wrong, but because I was dead tired and just had no energy left. This is a shame because it was, after all, only the second practice.

At the practice we did our defensive footwork continuous motion, did a Fundamental 5 breaking down one of the parts of the layup (since the team’s layup form was abysmal at tryouts), spent time reviewing the offense, which saw the four players practicing, Michael, Seth, Matthew, and Mason, getting lots of good reps. Next we did the Mikan drill, which works on put backs. First I had each kid do it individually and then I partnered them up and paired the two teams against each other. We then continued on to some Animal Rebounding, which saw Matthew win, due to some smart rebounding, followed by Michael, Seth, and Mason.

We concluded practice with some ball handling work. First I had them just shout out the number of fingers I held up. We then did this while moving. I did this slowly at first, and then sped up how quickly I did it. After a couple of trips up and down with this, moving at a good speed, I turned it into a game where they would dribble forward while I held up an even amount of fingers, while dribbling in place holding up an odd amount. I have seen Red/Light green light, which this basically was, in coaching books before, but the odd even twist was something I hadn’t seen and something I liked because it forced them to think about what they saw, just as they would in a game. At the end of practice we ran suicides. Mason was the only one who had one, and he had two. Everyone had earned a permission for beating the time I thought they could do the CM for before people started to show fatigue. Unfortunately, Mason lost Animal Rebounding (which gets a suicide) and forgot his Doggie Bag (which gets a suicide). So he had two suicides to run. To their credit first Michael and then Matthew stepped up to run a suicide with him.

I felt good about this practice. I hate the fact that we have only an hours worth of practice time on Friday and hated the fact that only 4 kids were at the practice, but it was a good practice. They all learned stuff, and hopefully left feeling good about themselves.

The bad news is that I simply can’t see us being ready on Nov 2 to play games with only 2.5 more hours of practice time. I think next year I am going to reschedule games to ensure that I have 3 or 4 weeks of practice time before we start our season. Better to double up games later in the season when we know what we’re doing than start before we’re ready. Of course that’s no help for this year. Of course losing this practice for most of the people wasn’t much help either. No matter, as I’m committed to coaching the best I can, and if the team comes through, great. If not, not. That is beyond my control.

Tryouts Day 3

Well day 3 of tryouts is in the books and my decision has gotten harder. 7 o’clock rolls around and we have 8 players. Players were not exactly early to arrive so at first I was hoping for six, so we could do 3 on 3. Just what I was expecting and just fine with me. At 7:03, after they’ve shot around for a couple minutes, Sammy comes strolling in. 9 is even better than 8 with me, as we then have 3 teams for 3 on 3.

During the intro speech I ask the players to think of what their strength as basketball players is. I paused and then told them that hopefully they had showed me that nights 1 & 2, but if they hadn’t, now was the time to do it. I also explained that if a player was on the bubble, the tie breakers would be their attitude and their defense.

To back up that message about defense, we start off with defensive slides. Quintin, one of my bubble boys, isn’t there so I am focusing most of my attention on Leonardo and Jack. And Leonardo looks much better at this than does Jack. Overall their ability to do this drill is still limited. I still don’t get it. I should mention that we’re only practicing on half a court tonight because there are girl tryouts going on simultaneously.

After the slides we do animal rebounding. They are lined up randomly, and so they are placed into random groups. I put Sammy in the second group and task the players with explaining to him how it works. We played to 5, where there is less luck involved than a game to 3. But interestingly enough Michael, who had finished first in his group before, finished first again. So that bodes well for him. He did a particularly good job of managing to get a shot off inside even under pressure. I know from talking to his coach from last year that he sees himself as more of a perimeter sort of player and also a player who expects a lot of playing time. It seems like it might come down to the idea that if you want the playing time you should expect to be inside some of that time. In the first group Grant finished 2nd, Sammy 3rd, Seth 4th, and Jack 5th. This was Jack’s second last place finish, though to his credit he was in there mixing it up, he just couldn’t pull it off. In the second group it went Matthew, Austin, Mason, and Leonardo.

Next up was the triangle passing drill. With only 8 players there I decide to have them do the full rotation, so everyone plays defense twice, and each of the three offensive positions. One group does manage to get to 10 passes, so that’s good. Less good is that I can’t tell you who. Can’t do that, because the girls’ coach constantly had lines in front of where my camera was setup, so I have no footage from last night. Rather aggravating actually. It is during the triangle passing that Sammy starts to make a case for himself. It is also towards the end of this that Josh shows up. He was one of the football people, so I was definitely not expecting him.

After the triangle passing drill I have them run some relays, which I was not paying attention to, and thought I’d just pick up later on video. While these were going on I was making teams for 3 on 3. Before 3 on 3, I wanted to see some outside shooting, something we hadn’t done at all. I wanted to give them a lot of time for 3 on 3, so we played a game of “Golf”. The idea in golf is to make a jump shot from the elbow. If you miss you don’t want the ball to hit the floor. It’s a rebounding and shooting drill all in one.

We then spent the next 25 minutes doing 3 on 3. And this is where things got interesting. Leonardo made a strong case for himself with his defense. Sammy made a case for himself as well with some real aggressive defense, though doing so without getting beat due to his speed, and he made a surprising number of shots. I don’t exaggerate when I say he has no shooting form. So did he get real lucky? I dunno.

The group had gotten tired with 3 on 3, so we ended with a couple more games of Golf, to make sure I had a sense of their outside shooting, and then a game of lightening, which I ended half way.

I ended tryouts by thanking everyone, telling them how they had shown more and more each night of tryouts, and shaking their hands while thanking them for trying out. Here’s a recap of the players:

Yes
In rough order from who I see as most talented to least:

Alex: He’s going to be our center. Much of the offense ran through him last year and I anticipate something similar this year. Due to his inside strength, and our general lack elsewhere, I think we’ll run a 4 out 1 in offense.

Josh: Despite being short, he’s tough. He’ll be our starting point guard. In fact at the moment he’s the only kid who I trust to both pass and dribble. Now the bad news is that he choked, repeatedly, while shooting layups in 3 on 3. He must have missed 6 or 7 over the course of the time. At the 5B level that’s a lot of baskets to give up.

Michael: I don’t have a good handle on his personality yet. This is a kid who, while my back was turned, both shot at a basket while waiting for a drill (definite no-no), but also sprinted when I asked him to go do something, again with my back turned. He definitely had some negative words for his fellow teammates. So I think there is the potential to be a leader there, but he’s far away from it right now. Good news is that he can do all the big things, shoot, dribble, defend, rebound, fairly well making him a nice overall package. As I indicated he’s a possible 4 player for us.

Seth: This kid has real potential. He’s the second tallest player on the team after Alex, but doesn’t have the fortitude to play big yet. Hopefully that can be developed. What I really like about him is his good attitude & his ability to have explosive speed with the ball. If he can improve his shot, he has the ability to take over a game, something that Josh and Alex have, but Michael lacks. Jon, last year’s coach, said he got much better as the season went on, hopefully there will be similar growth this year. As a starter he would probably play the 3 position, or small forward.

Austin: Here’s a kid who doesn’t have that ability to take over the game, but he’s not going to cost you a game either. If we were playing tomorrow he’d be our starting 2, which as I tend to coach is less a shooting guard and more a release valve. I tend to like my most athletic players at the 3 spot, where they can work both inside and out, or at point directing the offense.

Grant: If Michael can’t cut it as a 4, it would likely fall to Grant. The kid’s ball handling isn’t terrific, but he does have a terrific sense of humor and seems liked by his peers, which is always good for a team. He’s good at lay-ups, which is good for a 4. He made extreme efforts to thank me at all the tryouts, which was a nice show of respect, even if it was most likely parent urged.

Matthew: Probably our back-up point or 2 guard. Prone to mental mistakes at times, he can still be a solid ball handler. He wore a hat the first day of tryouts which didn’t even register with me until I saw the video. Frankly I find something about him off personality wise, and if there were more options I wouldn’t take him on that basis alone. However, this wasn’t a huge group trying out so I will take what I can get.

Mason: Before last night I’d have placed him much higher. He’s definitely the shortest player on the team. There were times tonight where another player just took the ball away from him. In this he reminds me of where Jack, a player on my GL teams for the past two years ago, was when in 4th grade. By the time he was done in 5th grade he’d learned how to avoid giving up the ball purely because someone was bigger and stronger. Mason has a good deal of basketball IQ and can see the court well. I would prefer for him to be our backup point guard, so hopefully he start to figure out strategies, with some coaching included, on how to not be taken advantage of.

Bubble Boys

Leonardo: He’s willing to take risks on defense to get that big score. That can be quite problematic as it leaves us vulnerable. He has, however, probably the best court vision of anyone outside of Josh, and will frequently make that pass to make it happen. Jon mentioned that he grew a lot last year, as I don’t believe he’d ever played organized basketball at all before this. Before last night it was basically between him and Quintin, but he showed me enough during 3 on 3, to say I should take him. Particularly because I think he can play back-up center. He doesn’t have the height, but does have the bulk, and this helps free me to use Seth to better effect. He came through on defense, and I said I was looking carefully at that, so he has become a yes.

Jack: He was an almost for sure yes coming into night 3. However, I watched him closely and can’t see what he does well. That was the charge I gave at the start of the tryouts: think of what you do well and show it to me. He seems like a nice enough kid. But what role or purpose would he have on the team? I’m not all that enthused about a kid like Matthew either, but it’s clear that Matthew’s skills warrant being on the team. Not so with Jack.

Quintin: It was disappointing not to see Quintin there. Unlike with Jack, Quintin does have real strengths. Quintin has a good sense of the floor, on both offense and defense. He doesn’t have the footspeed to always do what he needs to on defense, but he knows how to be in help, for instance, something I didn’t see watching other kids. He’s not going to b e an attitude problem in anyway, and would likely be happy with whatever playing time he got. Someone like Jack might be a little more skilled than he is, which is why going into today Jack was the yes and Quintin the maybe. But Quintin has definite things he brings to the table, if not much of a perceived upside.

Sammy: I thought for sure he was going to cut himself and was not surprised when we got started and he wasn’t there. But he arrived late and gave a very good tryout. He uses his speed to excellent effect on defense. When we would press the ball, Sammy would be an absolute nightmare for the other team. Only problem is that once we got the ball, he becomes a nightmare for us. Even if his shot is better than his form suggests, and I’m not convinced that it is, his ball handling is atrocious and a liability in any type of fast break situation, like the kind created by his steals. He would be a project. Does he have the desire to improve and get better? I just don’t know. The upside that Quintin lacks, is here in spades, but Quintin is definitely the better basketball player at this moment. Would that still be true in February? I dunno.

So me and my big pen talk about how my decision has been easier than in years past. And if Sammy doesn’t show up last night and perform the way that he did it is. I take Leonardo & Quintin, and cut Jack. Now though, I’m in a much stickier situation. I have until 4 today to make up my mind and I’m going to use all the time I have to sort it out, as who I think I should take changes by the hour.

Tryouts Day 2

Day 2 of tryouts is in the books. Sammy and Brandon, the two likely cuts from yesterday, weren’t there, leaving us with 11 players. We started off with dribble suicides, which didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know. I have a pretty good feel for who can dribble, Josh foremost among them, and who can’t, pretty much everyone else. After this we did Animal Rebounding, my absolute favorite drill. It’s my favorite because it teaches aggression, it teaches rebounding, it teaches how to get a shot off with three guys in your face. In Animal Rebounding you want points. You get a point every time you get a rebound, make a shot, steal the ball, block a shot, or cause two jump balls. Normally we play to 5, but to expedite things during tryouts we played to three. At three there is some definite luck involved, but upon watching the video the winners of our three groups, Josh, Seth, and Michael, were all worthy winners. We’re going to do this again tonight, and due to a football game I’m only expecting 8 or so, and we’ll play up to 5. Between the two games, I should have a good feel for their abilities in this game. I was encouraged that I heard a couple of players say they felt the game was fun. That’s a good thing.

After Animal Rebounding we did full court lay-ups. Basically everyone got the same range of scores, of 5-7, making it worthless. We did it for 45 seconds and it tells me that 45 seconds just isn’t long enough it seems to get a range. Though the drill was useful, since when I watched it on video I was able to get a sense of the kids’ layup form, most of which was poor.

I’ve ragged a little on their fundamentals, which in some ways is unfair. They are a B-level team and B-level team are going to have problems with fundamentals. And while I intellectually know the importance of teaching good fundamentals, I haven’t done the greatest job in the world of actually doing so. I have some structure changes to my practices that I think will encourage them to be used better, but I still recognize this as an area where I can coach better.

After full court lay-ups we did a 3 man weave, which was our first passing sort of drill. This was where a few kids showed some good basketball IQ, or at least good previous instruction, as they knew some of the subtle things to do, like running wide, to do the drill well.

We then ended with some extended 5 on 5, with some no dribble 5 on 5 in the last few minutes. They did it without complaint and did it in many ways more effectively than my 5th grade team did it at the END of last year, so that was all good.

Basically I have a team at this point and a fairly good sense of their strengths and weaknesses. I know I said that I was going to go kid by kid, but I don’t think it would change much from where I’m at today, to tomorrow. So when the team is finalized I’ll start going over the players.

So I have 8 definite yeses. I have one almost definite yes, Kevin, who just rubs me the wrong way in some sense. Not sure why, but as I watched the video last night he went from a maybe to a yes. But something about him & Grant, who does well on all of the objective stuff we do and when I watch him does well subjectively, raise flags for me. And they’re both nice kids, or at least can appear so at tryouts, so it’s not an attitude thing.

That leaves basically 1 spot for two kids. The two kids on the bubble or Leonardo and Quintin. Right now I’m leaning pretty strongly towards Quintin. I watched everything these two did very carefully on video and they each have their strengths and weaknesses, but overall it seems like Quintin slightly outshines him. In particular I like two things about Quintin. One is he’s always trying to play defense. I’d say Leonardo has better defensive skills, but he’s also less likely to hustle back, and he’s more likely to leave his man to attempt to make a steal. The second is that Quintin seems to have a good sense of how to move on offense. He was always moving around doing something productive, whether it was a cut or a screen, or balancing the court. I would say the biggest plus for Leonardo is his passing. It would appear to be top 4 or 5 of the whole group. I haven’t done a lot of passing stuff, but this has seemed true from what we have done. Hopefully both will be there tonight so I can gain that much more information on them. But unlike in the past two years I don’t feel the same dilmena about the final players I’m going to choose.

Tryouts Day 1

Yesterday were the first day of tryouts. Going in, I decided that I pretty much liked my plan from last year and would be following something similar this year for Day 1. It was a little nerve racking since 2 minutes before tryouts were to begin we didn’t even have 10 players. Fortunately, 4th grade tryouts ran a little long and so we got a late start with 13 players. I will be taking 10 of the players.

The first thing I do is deliver my speech. I deliver the same speech as last year, with a few tweaks. I think it introduces things quite well.

Our first drill is dribbling. And right away it becomes clear that one kid, Sammy, is not just a BAD dribbler, but is nearly incapable of doing so. We do both left and right handed. And then for kicks we do two handed dribbling. Several kids really stood out. Unfortunately, I don’t quite have names and faces down yet, so I can’t say all of the kids who did well or struggled. I can tell you that, Josh, who was the point guard last year, did well with it. So did Alex, who is going to be the center. Austin, was able to mostly do it, and besides being a lefty, seems like a really fun kid. This year I will be videotaping all of the games and so filmed tryouts. Upon video review I also discovered that Mason hadn’t gone particularly fast, but was slow and steady and in accomplishing it. Having players who can play with-in themselves is always a tricky thing so that’s a definite plus for him.

Following 2 handed dribbling, we do 45 seconds of lay-ups. The best at the layups were Austin, Grant, Seth, and Quintin. Grant doesn’t have the athletic skills that I’ve had on previous teams, but it seems like he might have the basketball skills and personality to be a valuable member of the team. Quintin was one of the favorites of last year’s coach.

At this point, I’d already identified two kids who were likely cuts, which is making me feel pretty good and giving me a fair amount of time to spend thinking about what kind of team we could be, rather than just who has the skills, or not.

Following the layups, and a water break, we did two drills which caused a lot of confusion. The first was just 1 on 1 dribble zig-zag up the court. This is a standard drill, one I know last year’s coach did, and so it amazed me that so many had problems with it. On the other hand, triangle passing, was one I expected to cause more problems and it did. Due to the confusion with zig-zag, I was spening a lot of time remediating and so once again the video came in handy in seeing who could do what. Except that because I’m not super solid on who kids are yet, I couldn’t always tell from the video who was who. Definitely lessened its helpfulness there, but I think I have a way of correcting that for tonight.

After this we played some 3 on 3. One of the things I didn’t like was the fact that a Josh and Michael always called for the ball and acted as point guards for their teams. I’m sure this is a relic of last year’s coaching. While I don’t believe just anyone should dribble the ball up the court, I also think that waiting for one particular kid, especially off rebounds, is not the best idea. I understand why Jon, their coach last year did this, because there is some weak ball handling, but I think I’m going to try and do otherwise. We’ll see how it goes.

The standouts for 3 on 3 were Alex, who is a definite yes at this point, and Seth. Seth, in particular, used ball fakes to his advantage. Overall I was impressed with the help defense that was played.

We then ended with some hardcore running. I don’t normally run them to the extent that we did here, but it lets me see how they act when they’re tired. With only 2 or 3 hours of tryout time per kid, some short cuts are required.

Then it was time to go home where I reviewed the tape. Since I don’t have good impressions of all of the kids right now, I’m going to hold off with a kid by kid run down for the moment. I will say that my two probable cuts are Sammy and Brandon. Sammy was the fastest and most agile kid at practice. He also worked hard on defense. But at the moment he’s a HUGE liability with the basketball. If a kid is better off not with the basketball than with, they can be ok with the assets Sammy brings. But if a kid has the basketball and it’s going to end up with the other team through a missed shot or turnover, that’s no good. The other probable cut is Brandon. He’s a touch slower than most of the other kids, he didn’t shine in any of the drills, and like Sammy, was super confused by much of what we did. A general bad combination. The definite yeses at the moment are Alex, Seth, Josh, and Michael. Michael’s attitude is questionable and if there was more talent to be had, I’d look for a reason not to take him. However, even factoring in the attitude, I think he’s going to end up being one of the 10 best this year.

And that is my overall first impression. They are a definite B level team. Probably a .500 B level team. Basically they are this year what they were last year. Hopefully we’ll have a good season, learn lots of good stuff, and have fun.

Catching Up Part 1

My last post was a rather despondent post about losing Glencoe. It’s been a rocky coaching road I’ve had since then.
Long story short, that post proved not to be an overreaction. Later on in the month they played in the HP tournament, where they were knocked out in pool play (recalling that they were the defending champions). I had hoped that was going to be a wakeup call, but instead just further lost the team. And when I say the team, that’s not really fair. I really lost two of the triplets who played for me. They were 3 of the 5 best players on the team and the team leaders and caused some bad habits in a couple of the other players. The ethos of our practices was not good. And I accept full responsibility for it. I’m still learning and growing as a coach and to succeed need to invest time. I simply did not invest the time in the team, really either of the teams, that was needed to be as successful as I’d like. Part of that was coaching two teams. Part of that was a new job. Part of that with GL was the players I had and my failure to maintain a tone at practice that was needed. The management aspect of a team should be a strength. It’s very disappointing that it turn out otherwise.
In the end GL finished 3rd in league play, and bombed out in the second round of the playoffs, exactly what I thought they’d do. I nearly didn’t arrange for an end of season dinner, but I decided that no matter how the season had gone (and by some objective measures accounts it had gone well) I should have one. I announced there that I wouldn’t be coming back to the team. I received far more thanks than I was expecting. For instance, Lucas had slid into the bad habits group, but his parents both talked to me individually about how much they appreciated all I’d done and how I’d had the right priorities. This was, of course, an issue because my focus on player development over winning was not what the triplets’ father wanted. He wanted them to win. And win big. And if we’d have played zone, he would likely have been on board. But I think zone doesn’t teach the defensive skills that will help players at the next level.
Of course this goes back to one of weaknesses as a coach. While I say I value player development, I’m really not nearly as good as I’d like at teaching it. My real strength is on teaching team fundamentals as opposed to player fundamentals. So it’s not like individuals are ignored, but because I coach by myself I’ve tended to try and focus on things that have as many players as possible involved at a time to maximize our very limited practice time.
So that was GL.
And then there’s HP. While things weren’t going so well with GL in early February, I was pleased with where HP was at. While we weren’t winning a ton of games, we were competitive. And then Small Fry happened. Small Fry is an even more select program than the one I’m involved in and a whole bunch of my team’s players made that team. We had played well in group play during the HP tourney, coming from behind to almost win a game against an undefeated team (NF for those with good memories) and coming from 12 points behind with 3 minutes to win by 4, a nearly unheard of turnaround at this level. But that was with the whole team. Come Sunday and bracket play we lost more than half the team to Small Fry leaving us high and dry. And this is what it would be like going forward as the whole team placed more of a priority on Small Fry than HP. So we lost the next day, but not by a whole lot. I still felt good about things.
Until Brian and Eric, my bosses, talked to me. They wanted me to slow down play. Get the kids more in control. So I did what they said. They were the bosses after all. And we were not competitive in any of our remaining games. But I had decided that come the playoffs I was going to coach to give us the best chance of winning. Regardless of what they said.
So of course Small Fry had to strike again. There wasn’t supposed to be a conflict between the two playoffs, but there was. And so when this all came down I said I needed one of two kids, Zach or Danny, because I needed a ball handler. So Brian and the Small Fry guy divide up the players and I was supposed to get Danny. This would have been OK. Of course Danny decides to go to Small Fry instead. So we play a valiant effort, but lose. And that’s that. It was dispiriting, in a whole different way than GL.
I ended basketball in a really bad place. I needed the change of sport. I needed to go through it with another person, something I’d have with my co-coach Steve. I needed some success. I will cover baseball in my next update.

GL Update

It’s been a while since I’ve written an update on GL except for my short update. Basically Brian had gotten out of control at practice this had a negative effect overall on the team and their concentration. I had not been terribly happy with the team’s performance since winter break except for the MP2 game. We beat LV the following day 34-32, in a game we almost blew. That Tuesday we played our arch-rival JCC, and they basically were in control the whole game earning a 5 point victory. Last weekend we played HP. We took an easy 25-18 victory, brought only that close thanks to a late 3.

The common theme to all of these games is the lack of a killer instinct that defined us so well last season. It seems as though we were merely going through the motions, coasting more on talent than anything else. And frankly I’ve got to think that’s my coaching in some way. In some way I’ve either failed to find the right motivational buttons to push, or even worse, my coaching has made them worse. However, considering that HP has only got more aggressive as the season has gone on, I don’t think it’s that my coaching has made them worse.

So here I’ve been generally unhappy with the team. And it hasn’t meant much because we’ve been winning. Actually in some ways it’s worse because I’ve been unhappy with the team, and the team has been winning, meaning there’s a disconnect between how the team sees itself and how I’m seeing it. I resolved after HP game that something I needed to do was have more fun coaching the team. I was not having fun, and part of that was because of the attitude problems. But if I started having fun that would, I hoped, break the cycle and help mitigate the attitude issues I was having. Also of help with the attitude? Brian did not play against HP after I sent Dad a long email outlining his unacceptable behavior at just one practice. I was quite hopeful going into last Wednesday’s practice that we’d have a good practice before the HP tourney (we had no gym space on Monday). But Wednesday’s practice was canceled due to a snow storm, so we went the week before the HP tourney with-out a practice.

And so this weekend we had the HP tourney. And all of the things I’ve feared finally came to pass. We lost our first tourney game to an inferior team composed mainly of players from MP and MP2. We got down by 10. We attempted a comeback, with 2 three’s by Andrew being a big help, but came up 2 points short. We then got annihilated by LS. You would never know that we’d beaten them twice. Of course the next day they went on to beat AH, so clearly they’re a team which has improved considerably. The LS game was an example of a game where we were just outclassed. Those games don’t bother me. However, because of the tournament structure after we lost to LS we basically were eliminated from advancing. And so it goes back to the first game where we lost to a team that we beat. The good news, or at least I think it’s good news, is that we beat the final team in our pool. This team had beaten both of the other two teams and had the #1 seed out of our pool so it’s not like they were a bad team. I’m glad that we didn’t finish 0-3, but at the same time I can’t help but wonder if that won’t interfere with the wake-up call.

This weekend should be interesting. We play three teams all in the bottom half of the standings. Will we once again go out and play just good enough to win or will we play up to the talent level that we have?

I don’t know. I do know that coaching has, as of late, brought me very little joy. I have to write-up a few HP games, but basically the story is the same one that it’s been all season: they play their hearts out, even if they’re not always playing well, but that frequently just isn’t good enough and they lose. And worse than that is the fact that the games Brian has been at, HP has played particularly poorly. I keep feeling like we’re on the edge of getting over the hump, but we just can’t do it ever and that is incredibly frustrating.

So I have a talented team which is underperforming and another team which isn't underperforming but neither are they making progress. It's just a maddening combo. If it weren't for the fun I'm having with HP at practices and even during games, despite the losses, I shudder to think how I'd be feeling at the moment.

So it's not all bad, but there's a lot of bad accompanied by the feeling that as coach that the problems are in areas where I could be making a difference. Motivation is I feel one of the few areas that a coach can make an impact. And while a good coach can only make a slight difference in the winning or losing of a team, that's all HP would need: a slight positive difference. And so in the end the poor play of both teams falls on my shoulders and I just hate doing a poor job at something at which I try so hard and care so much about.

GL Practice Report

If I haven't already I'm pretty damn close to losing GL and I am fairly despondent about that fact.

GL vs MP2

Well I just got home from GL’s game against MP2. The good news was that before our game, NF was playing MP in 4A. MP is HP’s 4A opponent tomorrow so I got some scouting time in.

Before the game I decided to go with “hockey subs” for the first half. I figured that MP2 shouldn’t be as good as us and so I wanted to make sure that all of my players got some quality playing time. I decided I was going to sell it to the team as the idea that we didn’t play all that intensely last weekend and so this would give them the chance to be intense for 2-3 minutes. I wanted to see all out ball for the time.

The first quarter went well with our team scoring numerous transition baskets. However, we were fouling like crazy. In the second quarter we didn’t do well responding to their press at all, turning it over numerous times which lead to a lot of easy baskets. After being up virtually the entire first quarter we entered half time down by 1.

At half time I talked about how in MP couldn’t keep up with us and so that the second they got the rebound or the ball they should be thinking about getting it up court. It was the 3rd quarter that made all the difference. They couldn’t sink a shot nor could they ever seem to setup on defense before we’d gotten back. They only scored 1 in the quarter but that was due more to misses than our being good. Our 14 points, however, was not luck. I felt real good entering the 4th up now 29-17.

I gave lots of playing time to Cameron, Tom, Andrew, and Jack M who’d gotten less playing time than they deserve in other games. David only saw about 1 and half minutes in the 4th yet still managed to score 4 points. They made a nice little mini-comeback in the last minute of the game, narrowing our lead from 10-7, but even then I had one of my weakest 5 out there.

All in all a good solid victory. In fact it’s our game all season where I felt like we were in control, except for the second quarter. And I think a big part of that was the hockey subs. In the 3rd when we made our run, we were fresh and ready to go. They, however, had exhausted themselves with their press in the second. If I’d wanted we could have won a lot more, but like I said I gave lots of playing time to players who hadn’t played as much.

This was the sort of solid victory I wanted, and expected, heading into tomorrow’s must-win against LV.

Midseason Overview

Half way through the season seems like a good time to take stock of where the teams are at. First up is GL. I am doing this from work, so I have no stats in front of me, and am instead doing this based on my recollection, except for what I can get from the league website.

Team Overall
We stand at 5-3. A record of 10-6 would likely give us the somewhere between the 4th and 6th seeds in the playoffs. There’s good news there though. The winning percentage of the teams we’ve lost to is .710 and the teams we’ve beat is .406 with an overall total of .510. Basically in losing to WK and AH we’ve lost to two of the strongest teams in the conference. The EV loss is just unfortunate. A good test will be this weekend against LV. They’re 6-0. They likely think they’re hot stuff. But 5 of their 6 victories come against teams in the bottom 6 places. They’ve also beat LS. In other words, LV is exactly the sort of team, like LS, that we need to beat, to show that we belong in a strong second tier versus a middling tier. But basically we’re an upper half of the conference team. This is better than I expected. I expected to be somewhere between 7-9 and 9-7. At this point, and based on our remaining schedule (the winning percentage of our remaining opponents is only .400) I’d be disappointed with 9-7. My goal is 11-5 though 13-3 would not be unreasonable. So overall the team is exceeding my pre-season expectations, but basically meeting my in-season expectations, in that we’ve won the games I’d expected to win, lost the three I expected to lose, though I’m still proud at how close we came to an upset against WK.

The Players

Andrew – He’s shown slow, but steady progress over the season. He fancies himself a much better shooter than the statistics show, especially at the free throw line. He’ll miss shot after shot after shot, even in practice, but still think he can make it. I support the positive attitude, since to a certain extent it does make him better than he would be otherwise. His big problem is that he stand around far too often on offense, waiting for someone to pass to him so he can take his shot. He’s working hard to improve on defense, though I feel those demands have never really been made on him before. I think it’s a shame that he wasn’t on our team last year since I think he’d have grown a lot as a player on that team. Alas. I see him having a lot room for growth, even if he only continues his steady advancement.

Brian – I’m glad Winter Break was when it was. Brian and I had had a few problems before break and the time off likely did us both good, though more him than I since I tend to be good about letting bygones be bygones. During the first part of the season he played well on offense. His commitment to defense wasn’t what I wanted it to be, and this was indeed the source of a lot of our tension. He’ll take too many risks & not move around like he should. I would, however, still consider him one of our top 5 players, but he’d be the 5th on that list. But the bigger problem, as alluded to above, is not his ability but his attitude. He’s a pessimist through and through and he shares his pessimism out loud and in a cancerous sort of way. I hope to do a better job of coaching him in the second half of the season to mitigate his negative aspects. But, as always, it’s a balancing act. Hopefully the two of us won’t fall down.

Cameron – Since break he’s decided he’s a shooter. So he’s shot a bunch of shots. And made about 2. Perhaps he could shoot, if he were shooting closer. His shooting arc, for instance, is much improved. His shots all look good, but keep missing. I have decided we’re beyond simply luck. I made a comment about it at yesterday’s practice to him. I expect we’ll see some change there. His defense has improved dramatically from the start of the season, but that’s not surprising. Basically whatever we work on at practice improves with Cameron since this is his first serious basketball season. He basically plays 7-10 minutes a game, but this doesn’t seem to phase him in the least.

Dante – Dante’s been a disappointment. He looked from tryouts and early practices, like a greatly improved player from last year. In reality he’s turned out to be the 5th grade version of what he was last year. He can sometimes have a soft accurate shooting touch. But he is slow. He disappears against bigger players. He fails to pull down the amount of rebounds you’d hope from somebody of his size. Even worse his free throw shooting has gone from rock solid to mediocre and I haven’t been able to figure out what he’s doing differently to help him get back on track. Still he’s a great kid to have on the team. I have found that playing him and Justin together often allows Dante to play better than he would otherwise, though this of course doesn’t help in terms of spelling Justin either from fatigue, or when he’s having a bad day.

David – A step above every other player on the team. However, at this higher level he’s simply incapable of consistently taking over a game at will. He still can take over a game, as he showed for a bit against AH and WK, but it’s not necessarily something which can be sustained. His inability to shed defeners has meant that he’s start taking a lot more outside shots hurting his overall efficiency. Turnovers had been a problem for him at the start of the season, but it’s gotten better, as he rises to the competition. Part of that is that I’ve avoided playing him, for the most part, at point guard until the second half. This lets him get in a groove without trying to force it too much. He’s gotten frustrated with me at times due to my tactical weaknesses at times. However, while the frustration is apparent to me, he keeps it to himself. His own struggles have meant that he’s not quite the active team leader he once was, despite still holding that position in the eyes the other players due to his skill.

Jack M – I give Jack a lot of credit. He’s matured quite a bit. I really worried what kind of effect he’d have on the team. While he was clearly discouraged in the game against AH where we were down by a lot in the 4th, he’s coping with it better. When we did all sorts of physical drills in practice, the sort that he would whine about incessantly last year, he said not a peep despite getting roughed up due to his small size. He’s the shortest player on the team and being short presents obstacles, but rather than complain and moan, he works to overcome them. I really didn’t expect it from him. I’ve rewarded him with additional starts, verbal praise, and try to get him as much playing time as possible. If he were playing Small Fry, or some other competition where he wouldn’t be dwarfed as much as he is, he’d likely be a star. I really hope he grows.

Jack P – He was doing better before winter break. He played particularly slow on Saturday. But overall we needed him to make a higher percentage of his shots while still keeping his explosiveness. He’d done this. His potential is quite high, but he’s not quite part of the social fabric of the team, which means that he doesn’t get the credit he deserves from the other players. This is nothing new. Still I’ve been happy with the progress he’s shown in taking his play to the next level and will be encouraging him to continue to do this.

Justin – He feels most comfortable on the perimeter with the ball. He’s got a sweet shot, so it’s hard to discourage this, but I think I’m going to have to, to a certain extent. We need him inside grinding away. Being a physical presence inside isn’t easy for him, but unlike Dante he’s not quite as soft, despite being nearly a rail. He’s so eager to learn I feel like I’ve failed him in that I don’t get him the 1 on 1 attention that he craves and could benefit from. Having him in the game generally makes us a much better than when he’s not in the game.

Lucas – Lucas, until very recently, had been the biggest disappointment. You might recall that when I thought I’d be losing the triplets (see note below about this) I had faith that he could be our dominant player. I hadn’t seen that. Until our game against EV. And it was then that I remembered something crucial about Lucas: he needs sustained playing time. Some players do better when they play a little, rest some, play some more. That’s how I am. Lucas is the opposite. It takes him a while to get in the flow of a game. I am hoping that EV is a turning point in that it reminded Lucas what he can do and also reminded me of how to use him.

Scott – Definitely the most underrated player on the team. It seems trite but he wants it more than the others seem to, but is happy to be in the background while his brothers get the limelight. He is simply too small to shut down kids much bigger than him as he used to be able to do, but he still has that post player mentality. He’s BY far the toughest player on the team. Not sure how much he’s improved so far this season, though.

Tom – Tom breaks my heart. He thinks so poorly of himself and he knows that others disagree with him, but he feels what he feels. He doesn’t realize how special he is, which is, to be fair, part of what makes him special. All that is old news. We were talking before the game against GV and he told me that he doesn’t enjoy team sports. And I believe it. He said that he’s just kind of in the pattern of signing up for the team so then he plays and when it comes time to sign up again he does, but he doesn’t enjoy it. I tried to find out, unsuccessfully, whether he doesn’t enjoy playing in the games (as he feels the pressure) or whether he just doesn’t enjoy the whole experience. But this is the kid who when we’re doing chants on the sidelines does it wholeheartedly and with abandon such that it draws in even kids like Brian and Jack M, who aren’t naturally inclined to such rah rah antics late in the game when they’re not in it. And the sad thing is he belongs. He can be an absolute shutdown defender. More than that his shot looks so pretty yet is off and I’m simply not a good enough coach to figure out what he is doing wrong, which upsets me.

The Coach

I do some things well. Problem is that I do a lot of things not so well. Like knowing the perfect way to counter a 1-3-1? I forget sometimes. It’s not engrained with me. I have to work at it. And I do work at things. That determination to be better is one of my strengths as a coach. But the problem is that with my coaching two teams I’m distracted. And I was burned out. It wasn’t until I was planning yesterday’s practice that I got a fire and drive and a vision of what I needed to do for the first time since the season started. But that was, to a certain extent, because I was able to focus on just GL. The mental space that I’d devoted to learning and growing my use of tactics? That’s all be taken up by my mental space doing the big picture stuff, the stuff I’m good at, with another team.

The other problem is that I don’t do nearly enough 1 on 1 stuff. Some kids like Justin beg me for it, and of course I help them then. But others who could use the help don’t get it. And that’s a shame, since I do have skills to offer them. Skills that I hate taking away practice time to teach, since it’s so valuable and there always seems to be some other more pressing need that we need to work on and improve. It’s a time like this that I miss having an assistant coach who I could turn over a group drill to while I do some work with a player or even vice versa.

My coaching two teams though has caused this team to suffer. But I think that just might be the way it has to be. I give myself a C- as a coach so far this season. The things that I’ve done well come from my understanding of knowing that if a team does X its chances of victory are greater, where other coaches might not always appreciate the importance of X. For instance I think our lack of scrimmages helps us far more than it hurts us, since it frees up time for other, more focused activities. I think my emphasis on having a high shooting percentage as a team is a HUGE advantage for us over other teams. But beyond these lessons I just don’t think I do such a good job of growing their skills. On my list of priorities then, I do poorly on #1, improving their skills, I do very well on #2, having fun, and #3, winning games, I do pretty well in how I prepare a team even if my in-game tactics don’t help us as much as they ought to.

Looking Forward

This weekend should be an interesting one for us. We play MP2, which seems to only barely belong in the A conference, on Saturday. We should beat them in a game that I would think would be like GV: We’re comfortably ahead the whole game though never feel dominating or in control. On Sunday we play LV. I really don’t know how good they are. This is a game that’s a must win for us. It’s a game I’d be hyping a lot more were it not for what comes on Tuesday. On Tuesday, with no practice on Monday due to Martin Luther King Day, we play JCC. A JCC team that I’ve learned not only tried to recruit away the triplets, but, according to Brian who would definitely know such things, tried to recruit Lucas with the lie that the triplets had already gone over to JCC. They are, not just rivals, but our arch enemies. Hopefully good will win over evil.

Coming soon, an update on HP’s last game and on Thursday (most likely) a midseason report for them.

GL Post-Winter Break Report

Well it’s been too long since I’ve last updated. I talked in my last post about the need for a break. I made the very consciencous decision to basically ignore basketball for my 3 weeks off. It was wonderful and exactly what I needed.

Today I’m going to focus on GL. I hope to get an HP update (which will have less to cover) later this week. We reached about the midway point in terms of league games with both teams so I will also be doing a mid-season overview soon.

On to GL’s update. We’ve had 3 games since Winter Break ended and have met with varying levels of success.

GL vs EV
EV is a major city. When I played middle school basketball they were always a team that would just run over us. Anytime my middle school beat any of the EV middle schools every student in the building would know about it since it was a major upset. They are big. They play basketball well.

However, for whatever reason, their 5th grade team is unremarkable. But a problem arises. We are scheduled to play them on the Sunday before winter break ends for GL. And I will be missing the triplets and Justin. In other words four out of my five best players, with only Jack P being there. I attempted to reschedule, with out success, as they claimed they had no open gym time. It was, to say the least, more than a little frustrating.

Still I like the team I have. Jack M and Lucas both played much larger roles for us last season than they have had the chance to play this year. I go into the game cautiously optimistic. My confidence diminishes somewhat when Andrew doesn’t show. That leaves us with 6.

The first quarter we look good. We also have a bizarre sequence where early on the EV coach, for no good reason, rubs the ref the wrong way and gets a technical. It was a completely unjustified call. At the end of the first quarter we’re down 8-6 but that’s because they destroyed us for a bit with their zone trap. We seem to have gotten the hang of how to beat it and I become hopeful that we can contend this game.

Unfortunately the second quarter blows a big hole in that plan. Their trap becomes even more effective and we can’t get a shot to fall. I don’t have the stats in front of me but Jack P reverted back to his old low shooting percentage ways. As we needed more from him I can’t be too surprised about this, especially as most of his shots came from the side, a place that is far more difficult to make it from.

During the 2nd quarter, Andrew’s mother arrived and told me that he was at tennis. Father had been told to pull him from tennis to get to basketball, but had not done so. He was now very upset both about losing at tennis and about being late to the game. She said it sounded like he wasn’t going to show and if that was alright. I pointed out that we had 6 kids and could really use him. He showed up during the 3rd quarter.

And in the 3rd quarter we were playing a 2-3 zone. With the exception of some quick time at a practice on how to beat a zone, I’ve never really taught zone defense. Half time was a crash course in such play. I did it simply because we were now down by 14 and all six of our players were spent. If we were to mount a come back I figured it would have to be in the 4th. I basically hoped it would give our players a chance to rest a little while keeping us, somewhat, in the game. And it did exactly that. We actually ended the 3rd down by 2. A reminder about how dominant zone can be at this age, when a group that is basically unfamiliar with it can learn it well enough to hold a team’s scoring down.

In the 4th I unleashed the dogs. Unfortunately we couldn’t make a shot. We were ALL over them with our press. Lucas played like an absolute demon, stealing the ball any time he got close to it. We played hard and scrappy to the end, losing 40-28, but I couldn’t be upset with how they played. They played their absolute hearts out. Bad shooting, and fatigue did us in. I’m quite confident that with our top 4 there that the game wouldn’t have been close. In fact if we even had 8, I think we’d have won since fatigue wouldn’t have been nearly the issue that it was with 6.

GL vs GV
Due to some other commitments of mine we were forced to only have our 1 hour Monday practice the week back from break. Fortunately we play one of the bottom dwellers, GV, for our first game on Saturday. GV comes out in a bad 1-3-1 which we struggle to beat. Most of our points came off transitions. We were patient with the ball but it was basically just a “pass the ball around the perimeter” fest. Fortunately we just far out striped them in raw ability. Our rust showed pretty clearly as we weren’t intense and we weren’t scrappy. We phoned in a 27-16 victory. I am proud of the fact that we only allowed 16 points. I knew from talking to LS’s coach that GV was a poor shooting team. I told our team that we’d let them take the outside shots and focus on getting rebounds and they did this well. It ought to have been a rout, but our offense just never got started. We won because of superior talent, not because of how we played and I told the team as much. I knew that this sort of lackluster play wouldn’t cut it against AH, who we played that night.

GL vs AH
It’s been interesting that this year in several of our games we’ve come out very strong in the first few minutes before fading a little. This is the exact opposite of what we did last year when we’d start off slow, often very slow, before finding our footing. So for the first few minutes against AH it looked like we might have a shot. But then AH’s superior talent came through as they went on an 11-0 run to end the quarter. We once again played hard for four quarters but were outclassed and lost 40-28. That’s alright as there’s not a lot you can do about that. What I’m more upset about is the fact that we continued to take outside shots against AH’s man to man. We have become afraid to drive and pass inside. Normally the other team is bigger than us, but I refuse to concede the paint, a place we can get to with cuts, screens, and some aggression.

Practice
So it was with that philosophy that I planned yesterday’s practice. As I was sitting at home, I got charged up about basketball for the first time since break. I was upset with how the team played in both games and I became determined to do something about it. This determination showed, I feel, as we had a really good practice.

We had a quick discussion of what we did well in both games, and we could have done better against GV. No one brought up what I consider the most amazing thing we did during the weekend: David, Lucas, and Brian all drew charges against GV. I hadn’t really ever talked about doing this, as I think 5th grade is a little young, but it fit in the general idea of playing tough that is my goal for the week. In recognition of this feat all three players started off even on their permissions/suicides (the motivational/discipline tool I use).

I decided, for the first time I think in my two seasons of coaching, to skip continuous motion at the start of practice. Instead we went right into Animal Rebounding, the drill I use more than any others to promote aggression, and inside play. Next we did a new drill. In this drill players were on two teams and each had a number. One team was on one side of the half court circle, the other on the opposite side. I would then roll a basketball towards one side and call a number and then roll the basketball to the other side and call a different number. The players whose numbers I called played 1 on 1 for 15 seconds. If they scored their team got a point. No score equaled no point for their team. They really enjoyed this drill. Brian and Scott both moaned that their opponents were fouling. In Brian’s case he was slightly justified as Andrew plays rough, but mostly legal; part of it just is that Brian doesn’t like contact. On the other hand, Lucas, bringing his hockey skills to bear, knows how to be dirty without getting caught. I warned him his team would lose substantial points if I saw him playing dirty. Scott issued no more complaints after that. It was noticed how Tom didn’t score frequently but neither did he let his opponent score much either.

We then did another drill, which I don’t recall what it was. Finally we ended with some 3 on 2, 2 on 3. We hadn’t done this for a while, but it proved to be quite successful. They played hard on defense, and did the sort of things on offense that are required for success. I was quite pleased.

We end our practice with those needing to run, running, and went home. Wednesday will, with the exception of some work on our half court trap, be more physical drills, but fun ones. Hopefully they’ll be tough and excited for the games this weekend. More on these games, and a midseason review of the players, to come tonight.

GL vs WM

GL went into our game against WM with confidence. We had played them last year in the HP tourney and beaten them with some ease. WM was also was 0-2 entering into the game. Before the game there was a problem with Cameron, who had never received his away jersey, an issue I’d completely forgotten about. Fortunately, in the end it all worked out as Cameron wore Lucas’s jersey from last year, which only worked as a solution because Jack M had brought HIS jersey from last year.

I went with a starting five of Andrew, David, Dante, Scott, and Jack P. And with 1 minute gone we were up 7-0. This felt more like it. WM called a time out and that killed some of our momentum and they were able to claw their way back into it thanks to the efforts of their very talented #4, who my brother nicknamed “Andre” (as in Andre the Giant). At the end of the first quarter we actually were down 12-9. The good news was that because of WM’s awkward setup it was hard for players to see the score. We came out strong in the second quarter with Andrew, David, and Justin scoring all of our 14 points to take a 23-21 half time lead.

The third quarter was a quick quarter with our scoring only 6 points and their scoring 8 points, all thanks to “Andre”. We got down early in the 4th but clawed our way back into it. We tied it up for good with 30 seconds left in the 4th. We had done some full court pressure, but it didn’t work too well. We really will have to work on how to press because with our speed we need that tool in our arsenal.

We went into the 3 minute over time period and the other team just collapsed, unable to make a shot (and most of them were not very good shots), while we got 4 points, and a couple of other good looks. Fortunately for us the other team was not in foul trouble and so we basically just stalled the last 40 seconds of the game. They did get the ball back with 9 seconds to go and I told my players to basically just stand there with their arms up. Let them shoot the 3 or whatever but don’t foul. Our time dutifully complied, they shot their 3, which missed, and we won. Their coach, who was a real nice guy before the game, was less than gracious after the game.

Frankly we were a lot better than this team. I’m glad we got the win. The question is why we had a close game at all. Part of it was because they made a whole bunch of lucky shots (the ref commented to their coach during the 4th that he should buy a lotto ticket). Part of it seems to be that we let up a little after our initial run and couldn’t regain the energy. But part of it has to be on me. And the frustrating thing is that I don’t know what it is, so I can’t start doing X, Y, Z in order to improve myself or the team. I don’t feel like I made any costly decisions this game, unlike last, so that’s good, but I don’t think I did anything to help us win either.

But perhaps it’s simply exhaustion. This was the last basketball related activity I’d do for 3 weeks. And despite that I still woke up and my mind immediately went to basketball Monday and Tuesday morning. I love the game and enjoy both my teams. However, I need to break badly. After writing this post I am basically done with basketball until our game January 6th and so hopefully I can get recharged.

GL Practices

I had a few simple goals with GL this week. We needed to work on a play to break the press, we needed to make some progress on our zone offense, and we needed continued work on man to man defense. Unfortunately with these as our goals it meant that we’d have slightly more drudgery than normal.

Monday we did our conditioning and I then taught the press break. Fairly good work was done on it and I was cautiously optimistic about how it would go on Wednesday. When we did it yesterday it seemed like they had mostly learned the play. There were a few refinements necessary, but overall they seem to have a good grasp on the basics. Unfortunately, for reasons I’ll discuss shortly, we didn’t actually get to try this against real defense, so we’ll be doing some live practice against WM. Hopefully it’ll go well.

Monday we also did Champs and Chumps with a contact lay-up drill. Scott, naturally, did well in this. While the whole team could benefit from this drill I was doing it mainly for him. When I commented to him on how well he was doing in this versus in the game he made some sort of excuse.

Overall Monday was an alright practice. Wednesday, however, was anything but alright. There was the initial problem that the gym was sweltering when we got in it. While they were doing our defensive continuous motion I took the time to open some windows. I was about to have the team do the defensive slide against the clock when I was called aside by a GL park district rep. Seems that the principal has been unhappy with our kids running through the school. I didn’t quite understand the complaint, but promised to address it with the team.

After doing our continuous motion I tried to do the work with the press break and it was silliness all around. It took far longer than it should have. It then took way too long to do our work on the man to man defense. The focus was poor. Finally, after a few sprints, I got most of the team to focus and so while our work wasn’t stellar it at least wasn’t poor.

We concluded practice with work on our zone offense. Unfortunately without having practiced it recently our skills had slip and we really had to go back to the basics. It was to my great disappointment that we only accomplished these three drills and didn’t get to do any of the more fun drills I had planned. We did get a little golf in there, and a little bubble, but that was it.

Fortunately we have our game Sunday just against WM, as our game against LV, who is currently in 1st place, was canceled. WM is one of the weaker teams and by not having a game which will push us to the limits first we should have a much better chance of pulling it out.

I plan on going with a starting five of David, Andrew, Scott, Dante, and a player to be named later.

A few notes on some players:

David: In my focus on my coaching decisions Sunday I didn’t give David his due. He scored an amazing 22 of 41 points for the team. He was on fire missing only a few of his shots and generally moving the ball around well. It was by far his best performance of the season and it certainly came at the right time.

Jack P: Missed our game Sunday to be at the Bulls game. This was not received well by some other players on the team who were also going to the Bulls game. Things got worse when he missed Monday’s practice because he and his dad both forgot. He’d have been the 5th starter were it not for this faux pas.

Brian: Even after I had settled down most of the players he refused to be settled down. He also flat out refused to play good defense in our shell drill, constantly insisting on cheating to try and steal the pass. At one point I stopped the practice and sent everybody for a water break except him to no avail. I also held him after practice when I got to the heart of the matter: he was frustrated by not having started. After his openly defiant attitude during practice (such that his brothers were basically telling him to just stop arguing) he knew he wasn’t going to start Sunday. However, we did agree that if he gave me a week of good practice after winter break that he’d get the start.

I am not excited by the prospect of playing against WM’s tall player and not excited about playing in their gym, with the spectators sitting so closely behind the bench, but I am confident that we should have a good chance to rebound after our loss.