We had a practice on Wednesday with GL. It was uneventful; hence I have not posted about it. As I will be trying to keep up on both teams as the season moves forward, I will likely just not posting about certain practices in order to keep things reasonable. Especially come January I would guess I would only post about each team’s practice once a week. Information from practice will also find its way into game reports as appropriate. This has been a long way of saying, that this will be an HP focused entry.
HP House League Games
Thursday GL had no practice because the gym wasn’t available so I went to see the house league teams I hadn’t seen play yet. Where I was impressed with the level of play the previous week, this week’s play was thoroughly unimpressive. There was a lot of drive and shoot without much passing by my players. Not too much different from our game, frankly, and not the type of basketball that will win it for us in the long run. Worse is the fact that there are, in reality, two kids on our team who I think will be able to consistently drive past their men in travel, but in house all of our players have that ability. I’m guessing my players have fun, but it does not help them become the kind of players I’d want them to be. Part of the difference, a large part, is that last week it was Kevin officiating the game. This week it was some random high schooler. Kevin knew how to strike the balance between making the appropriate foul and travel calls, and ignoring calls. The kids who officiated Thursday made no travel calls in the 3 games I saw and were far too inconsistent with foul calls. Basically it was organized street ball, which is fine, but could be so much more.
Josh, was still battling whatever sickness he’d had on Sunday. His team played a double header, losing the first. His team then won the second game, against a team that had far superior talent, by 1. But they did it with-out Josh in the second half, as he initially sat himself owing to renewed coughing and general not feeling well. When he then appeared like he was going to go back in for the final 5 minutes, his mom and I conferred and I told Josh that he wasn’t going in. Josh told his coach.
There wasn’t nearly as much for me to cheer about as there had been before. I cheered every good pass that was made, as there were so few of them. The positive to come out of the game was my continued belief that Jack B knows basketball. It’s a shame that he’s by far the shortest kid out there. I’m going to start him anyway tomorrow.
HP Practice
Had a fairly good practice, with all 11 players practicing. Ben tells me the doctor has cleared him to play with-out his boot and Josh is mostly recovered from his illness though I do sit him during continuous motion and our scrimmage when I hear the cough. I had two goals (well maybe closer to three) for the practice: work on breaking the press, and work on dribbling with our heads up and making passes, besides doing our normal continuous motion conditioning.
For the first part we do a 2 on 4 get the ball across half court. Overall it was fairly successful. Hopefully that success will carry over to tomorrow if/when NF comes out pressing.
We also did a drill where they had a partner and attempted to pass a tennis ball back and forth while not dropping the tennis ball or losing control of the ball they were dribbling. This seemed to work well as when they started dribbling during our scrimmage later they mostly did it with their heads up.
We did in fact spend the last half hour with one of my rare scrimmages. Now granted the first fifteen minutes was spent with no dribble. They actually adjusted fairly well to this conditioning, and, on the whole, spread out far more than my GL team has while running the same drill. Of course matters were helped slightly by the fact that Gavin and Jack A, playing on the same team, were defending other people’s men as much as their own. Gavin’s man, in particular, was often open due to Gavin not playing defense. After a period of complete no dribble, I allowed them to dribble in the back court, and press, and then allowed them to have one dribble in the area of the lane, which was never really used. For the last 7-8 minutes I let them dribble as much as they wanted, but they needed to have at least 5 passes to 3 different people. They also couldn’t dribble with their heads down. They didn’t struggle too much with this requirement, but it still cut way down on the number of shots created simply though penetration, which was my goal. They also couldn’t dribble with their heads down, something that happened surprisingly infrequently considering how they’d played in house league and at our first game. I hope that the tennis ball drill’s effectiveness carries over to tomorrow.
Next week we must do some man to man defense work. But overall, I was happy with the practice today.
Tomorrow’s Games
GL plays LN. LN who did very well in their first game, winning 44-27. I expect a tough game, but again a winnable game for us. LN has never seen David play before, so I think that’s a plus for us. And rumor has it that they’ve added a good new player, but so have we in Justin, so that should cancel each other out. I was going to give Andrew a start, in recognition of his being the only player to ask to sub out last game, but he’s out of town this weekend so that rules that plan out. So I think we’ll go with a starting lineup of Jack M (in recognition of his hard work during practice), David, Jack P, Lucas, and Justin. This is an aggressive group who will penetrate well. If we can set the pace as up tempo, I’m confident we’ll be able to out run them in the long run. At least that’s what we did last year.
HP plays NF. This is the same NF team that gave us a tough go in the play-offs though I didn’t remember until I read my game write-up for it that we’d gone with equal playing time for the game, which hindered us. More troubling from that write-up? The fact that our lack of point guard really killed us in the game. Uh oh. We could be in trouble. I will be going with a starting 5 of Zach, Jack B, Ben, Jon, and Gavin. I think they match-up well and give us a fairly versatile group to start.
I think both games are winnable for us and am cautiously optimistic I will be the coach of two 2-0 teams at this time tomorrow.
Showing posts with label NF1. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NF1. Show all posts
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Playoffs: NF1
We have our first playoff game against NF1. This team finished in 7th place, despite, I learn, being made up of 3rd graders. I had told the team at our last practice that we would be doing hockey subs for the last time. After that game I told them that I would be making no promises about playing time. We would be having 8 players for the game as Jack M had to play for his AAU team. Brian, who I was convinced was out for the rest of the season? He had been at practice the night before and I could observe no ill effects. His did had told me he would be able to play but I’d been skeptical. Turns out that his dad was very much correct.
The other team got into early foul trouble, but we couldn’t hit any of our shots either at the free throw line or in the field and so the game was pretty close in the first quarter. A great example of this was on our very first possession we took off a minute fifteen from the clock, with multiple shots, passes, rebounds, but not a basket to be found. It was a great offensive possession, with good defense, but shots just weren’t falling.
Going into the second quarter, up by just 1, I hoped we could open up the game some. We do extend our lead to 5 or 6 points, but despite even throwing some presses at them we just can’t seem to get anything going. They’re playing very well.
The third quarter is more of the same. They’re throwing a pretty good trapping 2-1-2 against us that does produce some turnovers. Our biggest problem is at point guard. We simply don’t have anyone who can really make things happen. Brian and Jack P are the ones playing point and both have their pluses and minuses. Brian is simply not as explosive and fast as we’re used to at point and so he can often get snared by their trap. Jack, on the other hand, is certainly fast enough, but his court vision isn’t so great and so he’ll often miss open passes or become too determined to shoot. Having neither David or Jack M, our two main point guards, was quite detrimental to our efforts and prevented us from ever gaining control of the game.
In the fourth quarter we blow the game open. Their best player fouls out about half way into the quarter and we finally hunker down and our shots start to fall. Scott also basically took control of the game, getting the rebound and dribbling down the court, beating everyone, for a lay-up a couple of times. It was just as David used to do. We end up winning by 15. However, despite the fact that we were basically in the lead the whole game, it was quite nerve racking for me as a coach. The kids on the other hand were never too concerned which might explain why it was so close for so long. I can’t really be upset with them for not being too concerned since:
1. I had stressed so much that we were a much better team than they were
2. Their unflappable nature is why we are so good in close games.
The other reason why it was so close was of course the fact that they were playing their best players as much as possible, where as I was playing all of my kids equally. After the game one of their parents commented to me, “You guys really miss [David]” as I’d told them before the game how he’d quit the team. It was quite clear from his tone that he felt like we wouldn’t be able to win it with-out David. While based on what he saw I couldn’t blame him for his assessment, I knew we were a better team than what we’d shown that day.
I also felt much better when I went home and did the numbers. I found out that we shot nearly a season low from the field. This meant that if our shots had dropped at a more typical rate we’d have won this game far before the fourth quarter.
Going into Sunday we were going to play MP2 and then (hopefully) the winner of the MP1-LS game. I felt very good about our chances and knew that it would be two tough games, but felt that the championship was in reach.
My day was not done, however. The coach of the 5th and 6th grade teams had games which conflicted and so I had been drafted to coach the 6th grade team until he could get to the game. I was actually more nervous about this game than my own as I’d only known this team from one practice of an hour and a half. I’m proud to report that when I turned over the game in the 3rd quarter the team was up by 5 to a team that previously defeated them by 30. They would later go on to lose by 4, and while it’d have happened no matter who was coaching it sure did make me look good :).
The other team got into early foul trouble, but we couldn’t hit any of our shots either at the free throw line or in the field and so the game was pretty close in the first quarter. A great example of this was on our very first possession we took off a minute fifteen from the clock, with multiple shots, passes, rebounds, but not a basket to be found. It was a great offensive possession, with good defense, but shots just weren’t falling.
Going into the second quarter, up by just 1, I hoped we could open up the game some. We do extend our lead to 5 or 6 points, but despite even throwing some presses at them we just can’t seem to get anything going. They’re playing very well.
The third quarter is more of the same. They’re throwing a pretty good trapping 2-1-2 against us that does produce some turnovers. Our biggest problem is at point guard. We simply don’t have anyone who can really make things happen. Brian and Jack P are the ones playing point and both have their pluses and minuses. Brian is simply not as explosive and fast as we’re used to at point and so he can often get snared by their trap. Jack, on the other hand, is certainly fast enough, but his court vision isn’t so great and so he’ll often miss open passes or become too determined to shoot. Having neither David or Jack M, our two main point guards, was quite detrimental to our efforts and prevented us from ever gaining control of the game.
In the fourth quarter we blow the game open. Their best player fouls out about half way into the quarter and we finally hunker down and our shots start to fall. Scott also basically took control of the game, getting the rebound and dribbling down the court, beating everyone, for a lay-up a couple of times. It was just as David used to do. We end up winning by 15. However, despite the fact that we were basically in the lead the whole game, it was quite nerve racking for me as a coach. The kids on the other hand were never too concerned which might explain why it was so close for so long. I can’t really be upset with them for not being too concerned since:
1. I had stressed so much that we were a much better team than they were
2. Their unflappable nature is why we are so good in close games.
The other reason why it was so close was of course the fact that they were playing their best players as much as possible, where as I was playing all of my kids equally. After the game one of their parents commented to me, “You guys really miss [David]” as I’d told them before the game how he’d quit the team. It was quite clear from his tone that he felt like we wouldn’t be able to win it with-out David. While based on what he saw I couldn’t blame him for his assessment, I knew we were a better team than what we’d shown that day.
I also felt much better when I went home and did the numbers. I found out that we shot nearly a season low from the field. This meant that if our shots had dropped at a more typical rate we’d have won this game far before the fourth quarter.
Going into Sunday we were going to play MP2 and then (hopefully) the winner of the MP1-LS game. I felt very good about our chances and knew that it would be two tough games, but felt that the championship was in reach.
My day was not done, however. The coach of the 5th and 6th grade teams had games which conflicted and so I had been drafted to coach the 6th grade team until he could get to the game. I was actually more nervous about this game than my own as I’d only known this team from one practice of an hour and a half. I’m proud to report that when I turned over the game in the 3rd quarter the team was up by 5 to a team that previously defeated them by 30. They would later go on to lose by 4, and while it’d have happened no matter who was coaching it sure did make me look good :).
Friday, March 23, 2007
End of Season Wrap-Up
After our double header our next game is against MP2. We completely dismantle them and based on their poor showing of sportsmanship at the HP tourney, I let the team score 50 for a final score of 50-31. Not sure what got into me, but there you go.
We then have a weekend off, because of President’s Day. That is when a bit of drama arises, though it could have been far more disastrous than it was. Our next game is against NF1. While we are waiting there, I learn that David won’t be at the game due to conflicts with another team from his caregiver. As we’re standing around I learn from Brian who sort of lets it slip that this might not be a one time thing but instead he might have to quit the team. As I have heard nothing along these lines I don’t let it bother me.
The game against NF is unexceptional. We go out do our thing and win. This was the first game where I went with what I called hockey subs. We had only 8 players (Tom had gotten very sick and was basically out for a month) so I divided the team into two groups of four. Every half a quarter I would yank a group and put in a new group with one player from the other shift. This was done as a way to give players equal playing time. Well David showed up from his other game just before the 4th quarter. I call him over to sit on our bench. He asks if he could play and I say of course, since I can understand his need to miss a game because of conflicts. At the end of the game their coach’s weren’t happy about this. My response simply was that I wanted every player on my team to have a chance to play. I had even alerted them ahead of time that I normally wouldn’t play him in the 4th in a game like that, but it was an unusual circumstance. Their moaning was a bit unjustified considering that he scored all of two points.
That game was on a Saturday. However, MP needed us to reschedule our Sunday game and after a lot of emails it got set for the last Sunday of the season as a double header.
We end up having a couple of weeks off then with-out a game as our game against WK has to be canceled as there is no time when we can reschedule the game. As they were the ones unable to play they have to forfeit to us, but I still rather would have played the game. Instead, the WK coach and I setup a scrimmage after the official end of the season between our team and his A team. His A team who is dominating the division. During this time it becomes clear from Scott and Brian that David will not be playing for us again. Does David or Dad ever bother to contact me? Not until March 10th, 3 weeks, essentially after it has been decided that David will quit the team, does their Dad bother to call me to let me know about this decision. I am more upset by this lack of communication than anything.
On March 11th we have our end of season double header after having been out of action for a couple of weeks. Our first game is against LS. I go with hockey subs again. After the first quarter we gain a lead and hold onto it. It is a great game to watch as we can’t quite ever put LS away but do manage to hold on for the win.
We have a few hours off before our next game against MP for the regular season championship. I am pretty exhausted as the night before I had a wedding which I didn’t get home from until after 1 o’clock (and could have stayed later). This combined with Daylight Savings means I am not at the top of my game for the first game and by the second game I am extremely exhausted. At the start of the game we’re missing Brian, Scott, and Lucas who are, I later learn, stuck in traffic due to a horrendous accident.
Anyway, we start off the game very strongly. Gordie, who missed our earlier game due to having his house league championships, comes out on fire and scores a couple of early baskets. MP gets their composure back and evens it up by the end of the first quarter. After that it’s a seesaw game until the third quarter when they build up a lead. This momentum carries into the fourth and the game has slipped away from us. This is where my coaching should have been better. One of our biggest problems though, throughout the game, was picking up our men on defense. This led to MANY easy baskets for them and was really pretty inexcusable at this point in the season.
More seriously is that early in the 4th Brian collapsed in absolute agony with his ankle. Normally when a player gets injured I go and see how they’re doing, give them a couple moments to collect themselves and then help them off the court of have them walk off. Despite my being out of it, it was quite clear that he wasn’t going anywhere. I then proceed to literally carry him off the court. Play resumes while I comfort him on the sideline. His mom is there and it’s quickly decided that he should go to the hospital. I write off Brian for the rest of the season at that point considering his past history with the ankles (having broken both of them in the past year).
The next day we have our scrimmage against WK. As predicted they are bigger, faster, and stronger than we are. We get blown-out. However, the team never gives up. Even down by 20+ we’re still scrapping away. The dismantling we faced exposed quite a few weaknesses of ours, most notably against the zone.
We end the season in second place. Overall we’d had a good season and I’m optimistic about our chances entering the play-offs. While MP will likely be a problem for us, I still believe we can take them. Despite the loss of David the team remains upbeat and confident about our chances.
We then have a weekend off, because of President’s Day. That is when a bit of drama arises, though it could have been far more disastrous than it was. Our next game is against NF1. While we are waiting there, I learn that David won’t be at the game due to conflicts with another team from his caregiver. As we’re standing around I learn from Brian who sort of lets it slip that this might not be a one time thing but instead he might have to quit the team. As I have heard nothing along these lines I don’t let it bother me.
The game against NF is unexceptional. We go out do our thing and win. This was the first game where I went with what I called hockey subs. We had only 8 players (Tom had gotten very sick and was basically out for a month) so I divided the team into two groups of four. Every half a quarter I would yank a group and put in a new group with one player from the other shift. This was done as a way to give players equal playing time. Well David showed up from his other game just before the 4th quarter. I call him over to sit on our bench. He asks if he could play and I say of course, since I can understand his need to miss a game because of conflicts. At the end of the game their coach’s weren’t happy about this. My response simply was that I wanted every player on my team to have a chance to play. I had even alerted them ahead of time that I normally wouldn’t play him in the 4th in a game like that, but it was an unusual circumstance. Their moaning was a bit unjustified considering that he scored all of two points.
That game was on a Saturday. However, MP needed us to reschedule our Sunday game and after a lot of emails it got set for the last Sunday of the season as a double header.
We end up having a couple of weeks off then with-out a game as our game against WK has to be canceled as there is no time when we can reschedule the game. As they were the ones unable to play they have to forfeit to us, but I still rather would have played the game. Instead, the WK coach and I setup a scrimmage after the official end of the season between our team and his A team. His A team who is dominating the division. During this time it becomes clear from Scott and Brian that David will not be playing for us again. Does David or Dad ever bother to contact me? Not until March 10th, 3 weeks, essentially after it has been decided that David will quit the team, does their Dad bother to call me to let me know about this decision. I am more upset by this lack of communication than anything.
On March 11th we have our end of season double header after having been out of action for a couple of weeks. Our first game is against LS. I go with hockey subs again. After the first quarter we gain a lead and hold onto it. It is a great game to watch as we can’t quite ever put LS away but do manage to hold on for the win.
We have a few hours off before our next game against MP for the regular season championship. I am pretty exhausted as the night before I had a wedding which I didn’t get home from until after 1 o’clock (and could have stayed later). This combined with Daylight Savings means I am not at the top of my game for the first game and by the second game I am extremely exhausted. At the start of the game we’re missing Brian, Scott, and Lucas who are, I later learn, stuck in traffic due to a horrendous accident.
Anyway, we start off the game very strongly. Gordie, who missed our earlier game due to having his house league championships, comes out on fire and scores a couple of early baskets. MP gets their composure back and evens it up by the end of the first quarter. After that it’s a seesaw game until the third quarter when they build up a lead. This momentum carries into the fourth and the game has slipped away from us. This is where my coaching should have been better. One of our biggest problems though, throughout the game, was picking up our men on defense. This led to MANY easy baskets for them and was really pretty inexcusable at this point in the season.
More seriously is that early in the 4th Brian collapsed in absolute agony with his ankle. Normally when a player gets injured I go and see how they’re doing, give them a couple moments to collect themselves and then help them off the court of have them walk off. Despite my being out of it, it was quite clear that he wasn’t going anywhere. I then proceed to literally carry him off the court. Play resumes while I comfort him on the sideline. His mom is there and it’s quickly decided that he should go to the hospital. I write off Brian for the rest of the season at that point considering his past history with the ankles (having broken both of them in the past year).
The next day we have our scrimmage against WK. As predicted they are bigger, faster, and stronger than we are. We get blown-out. However, the team never gives up. Even down by 20+ we’re still scrapping away. The dismantling we faced exposed quite a few weaknesses of ours, most notably against the zone.
We end the season in second place. Overall we’d had a good season and I’m optimistic about our chances entering the play-offs. While MP will likely be a problem for us, I still believe we can take them. Despite the loss of David the team remains upbeat and confident about our chances.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Spartans vs. NF1
Another day, another victory. There were a few hiccups. Like the fact that Northfield had a 1:45 start time. We ended up starting closer to 1:30 and it all worked out. When I announced that Scott would be playing the 3, he freaked. I guess he didn’t feel capable of playing a wing in our offense. It got to the point where I said “You can play the three, but if you really insist you can’t then I have to start someone else.” And so Jack P got the nod. So we go out with a starting five of David, Dante, Lucas, Jack P, and Gordie.
It’s clear from the start that we’re a substantially better team. The other coach used 3 of his 5 timeouts in the first quarter, and I hardly had my killer’s row out there. The group did well. I sub in Noah and Jack P with about 2 and a half minutes left in the first quarter and it soon becomes clear that Noah is playing injured. Noah had his game time limited accordingly, though I probably still over played him relative to his injury. At the end of the first quarter it’s 8-0. We quickly come out on a tear in the early second quarter and are soon up 12-0. NF didn’t come out with a press until about 3 minutes in the second quarter which unfortunately for them was about the same time that I put David back in. They try and run their press once, except David simply dribbles through it like swiss cheese. It’s certainly not the press break method I recommend but we never did see the press again. We have a commanding lead at half time and a ref, who we hadn’t had before, gives me the “we’re going to put them down softly” speech. OK.
The second half is not noteworthy except NF comes out in a zone towards the middle of the 3rd quarter. And let me tell you they looked hapless in it. So I basically do a line change we go with Indiana, our name for our zone breaker. And we can’t run it. We run the initial progression just fine, but when it comes time to get the ball back to the other side of the court the offense just falls apart, which is roughly the same time it falls apart in practice. At least it’s clear what we need to work on. We continue to run Indiana and some ineffectual practice with it, but I do gain a pretty good understanding of what some players need to work on. At one point Tom was in at the 3 and was completely not running it right and so I pulled him and was diagramming the play when he made some disparaging comments about himself. While I disagreed with David’s overall assessment on Friday I could not disagree with the idea that Tom does say an awful lot of negative things about himself. I told Tom I wanted to talk with him after the game.
The game ends and we’ve achieved another easy 37-12 victory. The second quarter seems to be our bugaboo as we allowed 6 points in it, 4 in the 3rd, and only 2 in the 4th. Though we did get sloppy in the fourth giving them better looks than I would have liked. On a personal note, except for Noah, I did an exceptional job of distributing playing time today. Everyone else had between 12 and 16 minutes of playing time. Considering if things were perfectly equal everyone would have 14 minutes, I think that’s pretty damn good.
Let’s look our individual players:
Brian – Played fairly well in his time. He had a great second quarter, which he played all of, but cooled off in the second half. In particular I think he was cheating too much on defense which allowed his man some easy shots.
Dante – Dante has been in a slump. I’m going to talk to him tomorrow before the game and tell him I want him to go hard on the boards. He had a few open shots he couldn’t quite convert, but more importantly his rebounds are way down.
David – He had an amazing 11 points in only 12 minutes and 9 shots. At this level getting 50% shooting is incredible, but that’s David. I told him at half that he wouldn’t be seeing much second half playing time, which of course he understood, and actually had him in as the 4 in Indiana in the 3rd quarter which he did a nice job with. I did get annoyed with him when after he had an early foul he was playing slack defense against their point guard. This was a kid who was practically dribbling at his shoulder. I actually subbed in Jack M at one point just to get some tighter pressure in the first quarter, but unfortunately they subbed the kid out at the same time. I called my only timeout in the second quarter to give David a mild scolding and tell him that this kid is nowhere nearly as impressive as the kid he was guarding last week, though this kid went with the “head full of steam” method of getting across half-court which proved to be effective. This wasn’t even a case of treating David differently as I think I’d have been equally upset if either of the Jacks, for instance, had played defense like that.
Gordie – He felt proud at how he did. He talked about how he took better shots and I agreed. He only took two shots and made one of them. He did have 5 turnovers so that part of his game still needs work, but this was his best game to date. Of course on the Win Score measure I use for productivity he still had a negative number, but it was less of a negative number. If we can cut down on his turnovers he could find some more playing time, though I’m not quite sure what role I would have for him, since we don’t exactly need a short kid who can’t guard all that well on either offense or defense. Nevertheless, I was happy for Gordie and how he played and the better shot selection was a huge first step.
Jack M – Clearly he was disappointed at not starting, though to his credit he didn’t say a thing. He did get very annoyed, however, that NF kept running their play “Brady Quinn”. I am not quite sure why they had an offensive set named after a QB. It was basically just a motion offense. But Jack did not like it. He was a pretty much non-factor until the 4th quarter when he exploded for six easy points.
Jack P – Jack actually led our team in minutes but didn’t do anything exceptional or poor. His defense wasn’t quite up to its normal stuff, so perhaps he was still feeling the after effects of his sickness. On the good side he only had two fouls so that part was good. Of course I’d rather have another foul or two and get some better defense.
Lucas – I’m going to make Lucas our MVP. He came up with the second highest win score for the game, and is actually third on the team for the season (behind Scott and David). He played some really nice help defense, mostly to make up for Brian’s lackings. And he had a HUGE stuff, where he came out of nowhere to prevent an easy basket on a sidelines play. Good enough for a game MVP and it gives me a chance to remind the team how important role players are. The just scoring baskets doesn’t make you a great player.
Noah – As discussed above was injured. He will not be playing in our exhibition game to give his ankle some time to rest.
Scott – Led our team in rebounds with only 5. We had a lot fewer rebounds this game than previous games and I’m not quite sure if it’s because we just allowed fewer shots or were getting out rebounded. I think it’s the latter and not the former, however.
Tom – Played pretty well in his time in the game. After the game I told him in no uncertain terms that he belonged on the team, was an important member of the team, and I was not going to tolerate him being so negative about himself.
For tomorrow’s game I think we’ll go with a starting lineup of Dante, Lucas, Tom, Jack P, and either David or Jack M. I think we’re in a good place heading into winter break and hope we’re in as equally a good place when we come back January 8, so essentially 3 weeks of no basketball, which is a long time. And then we have a killer schedule: MP1, our only competition for best in the league, some other shlubs, and then the HP tourney. I talked about this some at practice on Friday and will be doing so again tomorrow, but we need to stay in shape over break, otherwise we could be in some real trouble when we come back.
It’s clear from the start that we’re a substantially better team. The other coach used 3 of his 5 timeouts in the first quarter, and I hardly had my killer’s row out there. The group did well. I sub in Noah and Jack P with about 2 and a half minutes left in the first quarter and it soon becomes clear that Noah is playing injured. Noah had his game time limited accordingly, though I probably still over played him relative to his injury. At the end of the first quarter it’s 8-0. We quickly come out on a tear in the early second quarter and are soon up 12-0. NF didn’t come out with a press until about 3 minutes in the second quarter which unfortunately for them was about the same time that I put David back in. They try and run their press once, except David simply dribbles through it like swiss cheese. It’s certainly not the press break method I recommend but we never did see the press again. We have a commanding lead at half time and a ref, who we hadn’t had before, gives me the “we’re going to put them down softly” speech. OK.
The second half is not noteworthy except NF comes out in a zone towards the middle of the 3rd quarter. And let me tell you they looked hapless in it. So I basically do a line change we go with Indiana, our name for our zone breaker. And we can’t run it. We run the initial progression just fine, but when it comes time to get the ball back to the other side of the court the offense just falls apart, which is roughly the same time it falls apart in practice. At least it’s clear what we need to work on. We continue to run Indiana and some ineffectual practice with it, but I do gain a pretty good understanding of what some players need to work on. At one point Tom was in at the 3 and was completely not running it right and so I pulled him and was diagramming the play when he made some disparaging comments about himself. While I disagreed with David’s overall assessment on Friday I could not disagree with the idea that Tom does say an awful lot of negative things about himself. I told Tom I wanted to talk with him after the game.
The game ends and we’ve achieved another easy 37-12 victory. The second quarter seems to be our bugaboo as we allowed 6 points in it, 4 in the 3rd, and only 2 in the 4th. Though we did get sloppy in the fourth giving them better looks than I would have liked. On a personal note, except for Noah, I did an exceptional job of distributing playing time today. Everyone else had between 12 and 16 minutes of playing time. Considering if things were perfectly equal everyone would have 14 minutes, I think that’s pretty damn good.
Let’s look our individual players:
Brian – Played fairly well in his time. He had a great second quarter, which he played all of, but cooled off in the second half. In particular I think he was cheating too much on defense which allowed his man some easy shots.
Dante – Dante has been in a slump. I’m going to talk to him tomorrow before the game and tell him I want him to go hard on the boards. He had a few open shots he couldn’t quite convert, but more importantly his rebounds are way down.
David – He had an amazing 11 points in only 12 minutes and 9 shots. At this level getting 50% shooting is incredible, but that’s David. I told him at half that he wouldn’t be seeing much second half playing time, which of course he understood, and actually had him in as the 4 in Indiana in the 3rd quarter which he did a nice job with. I did get annoyed with him when after he had an early foul he was playing slack defense against their point guard. This was a kid who was practically dribbling at his shoulder. I actually subbed in Jack M at one point just to get some tighter pressure in the first quarter, but unfortunately they subbed the kid out at the same time. I called my only timeout in the second quarter to give David a mild scolding and tell him that this kid is nowhere nearly as impressive as the kid he was guarding last week, though this kid went with the “head full of steam” method of getting across half-court which proved to be effective. This wasn’t even a case of treating David differently as I think I’d have been equally upset if either of the Jacks, for instance, had played defense like that.
Gordie – He felt proud at how he did. He talked about how he took better shots and I agreed. He only took two shots and made one of them. He did have 5 turnovers so that part of his game still needs work, but this was his best game to date. Of course on the Win Score measure I use for productivity he still had a negative number, but it was less of a negative number. If we can cut down on his turnovers he could find some more playing time, though I’m not quite sure what role I would have for him, since we don’t exactly need a short kid who can’t guard all that well on either offense or defense. Nevertheless, I was happy for Gordie and how he played and the better shot selection was a huge first step.
Jack M – Clearly he was disappointed at not starting, though to his credit he didn’t say a thing. He did get very annoyed, however, that NF kept running their play “Brady Quinn”. I am not quite sure why they had an offensive set named after a QB. It was basically just a motion offense. But Jack did not like it. He was a pretty much non-factor until the 4th quarter when he exploded for six easy points.
Jack P – Jack actually led our team in minutes but didn’t do anything exceptional or poor. His defense wasn’t quite up to its normal stuff, so perhaps he was still feeling the after effects of his sickness. On the good side he only had two fouls so that part was good. Of course I’d rather have another foul or two and get some better defense.
Lucas – I’m going to make Lucas our MVP. He came up with the second highest win score for the game, and is actually third on the team for the season (behind Scott and David). He played some really nice help defense, mostly to make up for Brian’s lackings. And he had a HUGE stuff, where he came out of nowhere to prevent an easy basket on a sidelines play. Good enough for a game MVP and it gives me a chance to remind the team how important role players are. The just scoring baskets doesn’t make you a great player.
Noah – As discussed above was injured. He will not be playing in our exhibition game to give his ankle some time to rest.
Scott – Led our team in rebounds with only 5. We had a lot fewer rebounds this game than previous games and I’m not quite sure if it’s because we just allowed fewer shots or were getting out rebounded. I think it’s the latter and not the former, however.
Tom – Played pretty well in his time in the game. After the game I told him in no uncertain terms that he belonged on the team, was an important member of the team, and I was not going to tolerate him being so negative about himself.
For tomorrow’s game I think we’ll go with a starting lineup of Dante, Lucas, Tom, Jack P, and either David or Jack M. I think we’re in a good place heading into winter break and hope we’re in as equally a good place when we come back January 8, so essentially 3 weeks of no basketball, which is a long time. And then we have a killer schedule: MP1, our only competition for best in the league, some other shlubs, and then the HP tourney. I talked about this some at practice on Friday and will be doing so again tomorrow, but we need to stay in shape over break, otherwise we could be in some real trouble when we come back.
Friday, December 1, 2006
Snow Day
Well it’s a snow day here and that means no practice tonight. Love it as a teacher, hate it as a coach. So this means we are once again losing practice time. It really is adding up at this point and I grow very concerned about our longer term prospects.
The big question, then, is who to start, and what kind of rotation I want to do, for Sunday’s game. Jack M, Jack P, Scott, Tom, Dante, and David all can make a legitimate case for starting. Of that group, in some ways I want to bring Jack P off the bench, since he’s the most versatile of that group after David, who I am obviously going to start. But I still think Jack could be our third best overall player. How do you sit your third best overall player?
If, instead, I went based off of skill that would lead to Tom sitting. However, I don’t like how that leaves us for subs. Brian and Lucas are going to each see minimal playing time, most likely 3 or 4 minutes in each half. I basically want Lucas playing the 4 position, for reasons previously mentioned. Brian, is an unknown. Before his injury I’d had him penciled in as a starter. Now, besides not having a real feel for how I want things done (not the biggest minus considering we play just a step above organized chaos) , he’s still getting his feel for running, jumping, shooting, etc back. The kid has spent, essentially, the last 3 months with a broken ankle on one of his feet. It’s got to have an effect on his body if not his psyche.
With Noah not being there, that leaves Gordie and one other player as my main substitutes and Gordie is essentially only good in the guard positions. Despite the fact that the 3 spot is nearly a guard on our team, he doesn’t seem so comfortable with it. The problem is that at some point, Dante is going to need to rest. When he does I will need a center and that leaves me two choices, basically, Jack P and David. Both have their pluses and minuses. Jack P is serviceable there, but since he’s inside more he ends up with higher percentage shots (he took a whole lot of shots at our last game). David can man the position better, but then again he can do most things better and so limiting his touches of the ball seems counter productive. Perhaps I’m over thinking the whole thing, as if they’re doing the offense right, which they won’t, even the center is on or near the perimeter a fair amount.
One could make an argument that having David, as point guard, Tom, as the other guard, some combination of Scott and Jack P as forwards, and Dante as center is our best unit. In fact, I would be willing to make that argument. However, I just can’t bring myself to not start Jack M. First, he earned it by how well he played last week. Second, considering how well he played last week, it would have an especially damaging effect on a player who is somewhat delicate to begin with. So Jack gets the start. Further, having Jack bring the ball up means Jack is less likely to take a silly shot when he gets the ball, so it makes sense for him to play point, rather than David who is our best point guard.
As I would like to use Tom more as a guard and less as a 3, I think Scott will get the start as the three, Jack as the 4, and Dante as the five. As I like to remind the team, it’s a long season so I will have time to play around with that. This is one of those times that writing things down has helped to clarify my thoughts. And while it’s perhaps not my favorite starting five, I do think it will be our best starting five.
The big question, then, is who to start, and what kind of rotation I want to do, for Sunday’s game. Jack M, Jack P, Scott, Tom, Dante, and David all can make a legitimate case for starting. Of that group, in some ways I want to bring Jack P off the bench, since he’s the most versatile of that group after David, who I am obviously going to start. But I still think Jack could be our third best overall player. How do you sit your third best overall player?
If, instead, I went based off of skill that would lead to Tom sitting. However, I don’t like how that leaves us for subs. Brian and Lucas are going to each see minimal playing time, most likely 3 or 4 minutes in each half. I basically want Lucas playing the 4 position, for reasons previously mentioned. Brian, is an unknown. Before his injury I’d had him penciled in as a starter. Now, besides not having a real feel for how I want things done (not the biggest minus considering we play just a step above organized chaos) , he’s still getting his feel for running, jumping, shooting, etc back. The kid has spent, essentially, the last 3 months with a broken ankle on one of his feet. It’s got to have an effect on his body if not his psyche.
With Noah not being there, that leaves Gordie and one other player as my main substitutes and Gordie is essentially only good in the guard positions. Despite the fact that the 3 spot is nearly a guard on our team, he doesn’t seem so comfortable with it. The problem is that at some point, Dante is going to need to rest. When he does I will need a center and that leaves me two choices, basically, Jack P and David. Both have their pluses and minuses. Jack P is serviceable there, but since he’s inside more he ends up with higher percentage shots (he took a whole lot of shots at our last game). David can man the position better, but then again he can do most things better and so limiting his touches of the ball seems counter productive. Perhaps I’m over thinking the whole thing, as if they’re doing the offense right, which they won’t, even the center is on or near the perimeter a fair amount.
One could make an argument that having David, as point guard, Tom, as the other guard, some combination of Scott and Jack P as forwards, and Dante as center is our best unit. In fact, I would be willing to make that argument. However, I just can’t bring myself to not start Jack M. First, he earned it by how well he played last week. Second, considering how well he played last week, it would have an especially damaging effect on a player who is somewhat delicate to begin with. So Jack gets the start. Further, having Jack bring the ball up means Jack is less likely to take a silly shot when he gets the ball, so it makes sense for him to play point, rather than David who is our best point guard.
As I would like to use Tom more as a guard and less as a 3, I think Scott will get the start as the three, Jack as the 4, and Dante as the five. As I like to remind the team, it’s a long season so I will have time to play around with that. This is one of those times that writing things down has helped to clarify my thoughts. And while it’s perhaps not my favorite starting five, I do think it will be our best starting five.
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