Whoops! I forgot all about our game against the other JCC team. This was the Monday after President’s day and would be the last full game David would play for our team. The team was looking forward to it since there were 4 or 5 kids on the JCC team that live in the same city as our team. One of the kids on the team was even a kid who tried out for our team and didn’t make it.
We get to the gym and who should be practicing with this team but our old friend Luke. Turns out that a couple of players normally on the team couldn’t make it, so the coach (not Luke’s father but the other one) imported these two players to play for them. Now granted Luke didn’t play the whole time (more like 2/3-3/4) like he would in a normal game, but this other kid did play a great deal of the time. Meanwhile I was playing my whole team. This was noticed by the parents in the stands on how I played my whole team for quality minutes while their coach did not. I was further made to look good by my positive style of communication compared to their team’s coach (an example of this shortly).
It’s a close game, but they are slightly in front of us for most of the game. Of course, as always, I have an embarrassment of riches in that I have seven players who I wouldn’t mind having on the court during these crucial final minutes. Anyhow the fourth quarter starts to wind down and we’ve significantly closed the gap, from 5 points down with a couple minutes left, to now just 1 point down with 30 seconds left.
Coming in from a time-out we have our press on and they break the press. A kid ends up with a fairly open lay-up, from a standing position, which he misses. The coach explodes. We drive down and get fouled and so another time-out is called.
The coach explodes again at the player who had taken the shot saying how he said not to shoot. I understand the strategy here (kill the clock). However, if one of my kids has an open shot there and shoots it, I'm not going to be upset with him. I even posted this on a coach’s bulletin board and most agreed that the kid should take the open shot. Even beyond that I would never treat one of my players with so little dignity.
We end up gutting out the victory. It was great. After the game their coach said to me “Why don’t we just play the last couple of minutes against you guys?”. It made me smile. No doubt he believes that his team is better (even though they brought in ringers in order to have a chance) but can’t beat us. Like it’s bad luck. And there is no question there is some bad luck involved there. But then again our team doesn’t fold under pressure and there’s a reason we’re always with-in striking distance the whole game.
Looking at the players on their team, there was one player who I’d LOVE to have next year. He was tall (taller than Dante) and quick. That works quite well in the system I’m promoting. I’m hoping he was one of the kids who was noticing how much more fun it is to play for me :). I also was glad to see that I hadn’t made a mistake and was correct in not taking the kid who played for them and who I’d cut.
It was another great game, and it was nice to go into their gym (with their biased refs) and beat them, especially when they resort to using ringers.
Showing posts with label refs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label refs. Show all posts
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Tourney Wrap-up
After the game and into Monday’s practice the big question was when did I know that they would be a good team and did I really think that we’d win the tournament the whole time. I said that except for the first few minutes of the JCC game, when it looked like we were just too tired to play any more, I really believed that we had an excellent shot at winning the tournament. I also told how I didn’t know how good of a team we’d be until after our first game, when I knew we had a very good team.
For Monday’s practice I called only a half practice. I anted us to have a little time to debrief, I wanted to do our continuous motion, and I wanted a chance to talk to each of the players individually, about goals/thoughts/etc for the end of the season. I was a fun practice where everyone was still in a good mood after the heroics of the weekend.
Here’s a look at some notes that didn’t make it into the tourney reports as well as a few things that came out of my talks on Monday with the players.
Brian – The only big downside to the whole tourney was the conflict between Brian and David. The two went at each other several times and it became a problem. When I talked to each of them on Monday I really talked about how I just would not tolerate players not getting along with each other on the court and so they needed to stop arguing with each other. Brian asked me during our chat if “I can and should shoot more”. It was a great question. Brian didn’t put big numbers during the tourney. Mainly this was because he didn’t get the ball a whole lot. In our first game against the JCC he popped a 3 pointer, just because he could. When I pulled him, he got very mad and went into his defeatist mode. Despite the disrespect he’d shown, I decided the best way to handle the situation was to just ignore him and I let him start the second half. The two of us didn’t have a conflict again the rest of the weekend. He also played good defense during the tourney, not succumbing to his desire to leave his man alone to make the steal, and set a couple of picks, basically the only player on the team to do so, for which I gave him complements. So in response to his question I said that I would have liked to have seen him get the ball more during the tourney. He’s a good shooter so I don’t mind him shooting smart shots. He really seemed to appreciate that response, which was good.
Dante – Dante, not having played any soccer this weekend, did do better than normal during the tourney. He’s still a little too erratic for my tastes, as I can’t figure out what will cause him to have a good game or not. He’s not quite the inside presence that his size would suggest. However, he did seem to find his “spot” to shoot from so that part was good. We’ll see if he can find shots from there again.
David – The big watchword this weekend was “frustration”. Besides the conflict with Brian, just having him be calm and collected on the court is important. Of course the two times we needed him to be cool, with the last second shots, he was as collected as Jordan. EVERYONE seemed to know him because he’s just that gifted of an athlete. I was typing this before our HP game today and a parent from the HP B team, which we hadn’t played with David, who remarked how good #20 is. As long as David doesn’t try to do too much we’ll be in good shape. I let David know that I plan on having him play the post more during the second half of the season. By playing him in the post it’ll open more time up at the 1, 2, and 3 positions, which is good for the kids who can only play those spots.
Gordie – Gordie is a good kid and has a speech impediment that, combined with his small stature, makes him very cute. He loves the game of basketball, that much is clear. That said he just drove me nuts. When he wasn’t asking to go in, he was giving his “look at me I’m an angel” face when it was clear I was doing a sub. Part of the reason that this was likely driving me nuts is that I knew he wanted to play and was only giving him close to, and actually a bit under, the 10 minutes of playing time I wanted to get my players as a minimum. This guilt was even more pronounced with Noah. Now, to his credit, he is very coachable and does most of the things I ask him to do. During our talk it was clear that he wanted to play point guard. I mentioned how he gets the chance to play point in his house league games, but that turns out not to be true. So basically he’s not good enough to play point on a house league team, how in the world does he think he’s good enough to play point on a travel team? He was, I believe, the only player not to get a start during the tourney. I told him he’d get a few starts and some opportunities to play point. He doesn’t have the skill set to be a good point right now, so it’ll most likely be in games against the NFs that I give him his shot at point. In a bit of statistical humor, he was our leading rebounder in the WM game, since he got the outside rebounds, where all the inside rebounds were vacuumed up by their center.
Jack M – Jack stepped it up to a new level during the tourney. His defense was fantastic. He did a great job of moving the ball around and of penetrating. Not to mention his clutch free throws. When its needed it seems like he can take up his game a notch, whether it was because the triplets weren’t there for the first game of the season (his best game before this tourney) or in this tourney against tougher competition. I was most proud of how he made progress on being confident in the team. I think he finally believes it’s a good team and that should help him going forward in being a positive contributor.
Jack P – This kid needs to take 500 shots a day. He’s our most gifted athlete on the court next to David. He can dribble through a traffic jam if needed and he guarded Luke nearly as well as David had. But his shooting percentage kills me. He’s got a pretty looking shot, which means there has to be something mechanically wrong with his shot, and shot mechanics happens to be a part where I need to be a stronger coach with, so it’s a bad fit. He’s a great complement to David, and racked up the most minutes, deservedly, in the championship game. I just wished he could make more of his shots.
Lucas – He had a great game against WM, but other than that I don’t really recall much of what he did, which means he mostly did what he was supposed to. I think he really struggled guarding some of the better inside men, which isn’t surprising that he’s still not entirely comfortable in that role.
Noah – Noah just looks lost a lot of the time out there. His sense of where he needs to be on the court, both on offense and on defense just isn’t up to snuff compared with the rest of the team. He’s another good kid, and unlike Gordie he doesn’t drive me NUTS with whether or not he’s going to get to play, but he had the lowest number of minutes in the tourney of anyone on our team. Fortunately, I think he’s the kind of kid who doesn’t mind sitting on the bench as much. He loves sitting next to me (I sit in the middle of the kids rather than at the end) and I think he enjoys hearing me talk about the game.
Scott – He has many of the best qualities of his two brothers. When we were talking I told him how if he saw his brothers getting frustrated he might be able to, where I cannot, to get him to calm. I told him if he ever felt uncomfortable saying something, that he shouldn’t, but that he might be able to say chill, where it would be meaningless coming from me.
Tom – The mystery that is Tom continues. I don’t think Tom is having as good of a time as the other kids, which is a shame. I don’t know if the problem is with me, or himself, or what. I’m going to try and give him some time at point and see if he does better there, which I think is a definite possibility. I really like Tom and I wish I could know what I could do to make him succeed and seem like he’s having more fun.
Me – Tom’s mom cracked me up. She and I were talking after the championship game. And she said to me, “Did you know you were entering them in the A tourney?” I mean what did she think it came as complete surprise to me? Perhaps this was the adult version of “Did you know they we were this good?” It was very gratifying to receive so many complements on what a well coached team they were. Of course when you’re winning there are always complements to be had. The complement I appreciated most was a comment from Lucas’s father. He sent me a congratulatory e-mail and referenced how much he liked one particular thing. David had made an awful pass in the 4th quarter of the championship game. He’d made another not so good pass a little earlier. He was really upset with himself and I told him to smile. Normally moments like that are done away from the parents, so they don’t get to hear it, but it was nice that someone heard it and though to say something about it. I think I did a good job of keeping the team on an even keel. While I talk about in baseball how Steve is the better rah-rah guy, I think I’ve done a pretty good job of getting them going when they needed it.
Refs – The officiating overall at this tournament was very good. Except for the one guy I talked about during the WM game, there weren’t any disputes or problems. There was a woman ref who reffed both of our JCC games and our game against Karzen. She was excellent. She always had a smile on her face and would naturally give an explanation if an explanation was needed to the players. She was fabulous and by far the best ref I’d seen at this level of play.
After the tournament I decided to go out and celebrate by having dinner at my favorite steak place. My parents came along as well and we had wonderful dinner. However, I was not the only winning coach in the restaurant that day. Lovie Smith was there as well and my family had finished dinner and desert just as the Colts/Pats game was ending so I got to watch the end of that game with Lovie standing about six feet away. It was a really neat experience.
For Monday’s practice I called only a half practice. I anted us to have a little time to debrief, I wanted to do our continuous motion, and I wanted a chance to talk to each of the players individually, about goals/thoughts/etc for the end of the season. I was a fun practice where everyone was still in a good mood after the heroics of the weekend.
Here’s a look at some notes that didn’t make it into the tourney reports as well as a few things that came out of my talks on Monday with the players.
Brian – The only big downside to the whole tourney was the conflict between Brian and David. The two went at each other several times and it became a problem. When I talked to each of them on Monday I really talked about how I just would not tolerate players not getting along with each other on the court and so they needed to stop arguing with each other. Brian asked me during our chat if “I can and should shoot more”. It was a great question. Brian didn’t put big numbers during the tourney. Mainly this was because he didn’t get the ball a whole lot. In our first game against the JCC he popped a 3 pointer, just because he could. When I pulled him, he got very mad and went into his defeatist mode. Despite the disrespect he’d shown, I decided the best way to handle the situation was to just ignore him and I let him start the second half. The two of us didn’t have a conflict again the rest of the weekend. He also played good defense during the tourney, not succumbing to his desire to leave his man alone to make the steal, and set a couple of picks, basically the only player on the team to do so, for which I gave him complements. So in response to his question I said that I would have liked to have seen him get the ball more during the tourney. He’s a good shooter so I don’t mind him shooting smart shots. He really seemed to appreciate that response, which was good.
Dante – Dante, not having played any soccer this weekend, did do better than normal during the tourney. He’s still a little too erratic for my tastes, as I can’t figure out what will cause him to have a good game or not. He’s not quite the inside presence that his size would suggest. However, he did seem to find his “spot” to shoot from so that part was good. We’ll see if he can find shots from there again.
David – The big watchword this weekend was “frustration”. Besides the conflict with Brian, just having him be calm and collected on the court is important. Of course the two times we needed him to be cool, with the last second shots, he was as collected as Jordan. EVERYONE seemed to know him because he’s just that gifted of an athlete. I was typing this before our HP game today and a parent from the HP B team, which we hadn’t played with David, who remarked how good #20 is. As long as David doesn’t try to do too much we’ll be in good shape. I let David know that I plan on having him play the post more during the second half of the season. By playing him in the post it’ll open more time up at the 1, 2, and 3 positions, which is good for the kids who can only play those spots.
Gordie – Gordie is a good kid and has a speech impediment that, combined with his small stature, makes him very cute. He loves the game of basketball, that much is clear. That said he just drove me nuts. When he wasn’t asking to go in, he was giving his “look at me I’m an angel” face when it was clear I was doing a sub. Part of the reason that this was likely driving me nuts is that I knew he wanted to play and was only giving him close to, and actually a bit under, the 10 minutes of playing time I wanted to get my players as a minimum. This guilt was even more pronounced with Noah. Now, to his credit, he is very coachable and does most of the things I ask him to do. During our talk it was clear that he wanted to play point guard. I mentioned how he gets the chance to play point in his house league games, but that turns out not to be true. So basically he’s not good enough to play point on a house league team, how in the world does he think he’s good enough to play point on a travel team? He was, I believe, the only player not to get a start during the tourney. I told him he’d get a few starts and some opportunities to play point. He doesn’t have the skill set to be a good point right now, so it’ll most likely be in games against the NFs that I give him his shot at point. In a bit of statistical humor, he was our leading rebounder in the WM game, since he got the outside rebounds, where all the inside rebounds were vacuumed up by their center.
Jack M – Jack stepped it up to a new level during the tourney. His defense was fantastic. He did a great job of moving the ball around and of penetrating. Not to mention his clutch free throws. When its needed it seems like he can take up his game a notch, whether it was because the triplets weren’t there for the first game of the season (his best game before this tourney) or in this tourney against tougher competition. I was most proud of how he made progress on being confident in the team. I think he finally believes it’s a good team and that should help him going forward in being a positive contributor.
Jack P – This kid needs to take 500 shots a day. He’s our most gifted athlete on the court next to David. He can dribble through a traffic jam if needed and he guarded Luke nearly as well as David had. But his shooting percentage kills me. He’s got a pretty looking shot, which means there has to be something mechanically wrong with his shot, and shot mechanics happens to be a part where I need to be a stronger coach with, so it’s a bad fit. He’s a great complement to David, and racked up the most minutes, deservedly, in the championship game. I just wished he could make more of his shots.
Lucas – He had a great game against WM, but other than that I don’t really recall much of what he did, which means he mostly did what he was supposed to. I think he really struggled guarding some of the better inside men, which isn’t surprising that he’s still not entirely comfortable in that role.
Noah – Noah just looks lost a lot of the time out there. His sense of where he needs to be on the court, both on offense and on defense just isn’t up to snuff compared with the rest of the team. He’s another good kid, and unlike Gordie he doesn’t drive me NUTS with whether or not he’s going to get to play, but he had the lowest number of minutes in the tourney of anyone on our team. Fortunately, I think he’s the kind of kid who doesn’t mind sitting on the bench as much. He loves sitting next to me (I sit in the middle of the kids rather than at the end) and I think he enjoys hearing me talk about the game.
Scott – He has many of the best qualities of his two brothers. When we were talking I told him how if he saw his brothers getting frustrated he might be able to, where I cannot, to get him to calm. I told him if he ever felt uncomfortable saying something, that he shouldn’t, but that he might be able to say chill, where it would be meaningless coming from me.
Tom – The mystery that is Tom continues. I don’t think Tom is having as good of a time as the other kids, which is a shame. I don’t know if the problem is with me, or himself, or what. I’m going to try and give him some time at point and see if he does better there, which I think is a definite possibility. I really like Tom and I wish I could know what I could do to make him succeed and seem like he’s having more fun.
Me – Tom’s mom cracked me up. She and I were talking after the championship game. And she said to me, “Did you know you were entering them in the A tourney?” I mean what did she think it came as complete surprise to me? Perhaps this was the adult version of “Did you know they we were this good?” It was very gratifying to receive so many complements on what a well coached team they were. Of course when you’re winning there are always complements to be had. The complement I appreciated most was a comment from Lucas’s father. He sent me a congratulatory e-mail and referenced how much he liked one particular thing. David had made an awful pass in the 4th quarter of the championship game. He’d made another not so good pass a little earlier. He was really upset with himself and I told him to smile. Normally moments like that are done away from the parents, so they don’t get to hear it, but it was nice that someone heard it and though to say something about it. I think I did a good job of keeping the team on an even keel. While I talk about in baseball how Steve is the better rah-rah guy, I think I’ve done a pretty good job of getting them going when they needed it.
Refs – The officiating overall at this tournament was very good. Except for the one guy I talked about during the WM game, there weren’t any disputes or problems. There was a woman ref who reffed both of our JCC games and our game against Karzen. She was excellent. She always had a smile on her face and would naturally give an explanation if an explanation was needed to the players. She was fabulous and by far the best ref I’d seen at this level of play.
After the tournament I decided to go out and celebrate by having dinner at my favorite steak place. My parents came along as well and we had wonderful dinner. However, I was not the only winning coach in the restaurant that day. Lovie Smith was there as well and my family had finished dinner and desert just as the Colts/Pats game was ending so I got to watch the end of that game with Lovie standing about six feet away. It was a really neat experience.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Spartans vs. MP1
Well yesterday was the day. After essentially a month of anticipation we finally got to have our go against MP and the game was every bit as competitive as I’d expected.
I get to the game a little bit earlier than a half hour and get to see a good portion of the 6th grade girls team getting blown out by another team. It was not a pretty sight. The MP coach arrived early and we chatted a little bit before the game. He seemed like a nice guy and we chatted with each other quite amiably. Anyhow we straggle in, with 9 of the 10 players getting there by the designated time of 5:30. I had been informed we were going to start the game 10 minutes early, which I objected to under the grounds that my whole team might not be there. However, when at 5:35 we had all buy Gordie there I said we can go ahead and Goride arrived just as we were going over to the huddle to talk.
In the pregame huddle I reminded them of some of the highlights of last night’s speech and then explained that our offensive focus would be beating them back. I wanted that ball in bounded quickly, sent to the outlet even quicker. On defense I identified our priority as helping out in our man-to-man defense. And then it was time to send our starting five of David, Tom, Brian, Scott, and Lucas out there. The good news is that this team is not particularly tall. It seems like when the two MP teams were divvying up the players MP2 took the taller players, who were slightly less athletic, while MP took the slightly more athletic players.
They come out and right off the bat run basically the same high screen play that MP2 ran. As they were running this play the third time, (they called it 1) though not on consecutive possessions I shouted out “Watch the high pick. Just like the other MP team ran.” My players adjusted accordingly and we only saw this play one other time during the game. They also ran a double pick play that proved quite effective. It led to numerous fouls being called on us and several baskets as well. They were a good shooting free throw team and we quickly fell behind. I was not surprised that we were committing so many fouls. I didn’t do a good job of calling fouls during the 3 on 3 drill we did and the Animal Rebounding drill is predicated on not calling too many fouls, so our team had gotten a little sloppy.
Meanwhile on our side of the ball, they were running a 2-1-2 defense. I basically let our offense try and work the motion and see if they could create something, but to no avail. I called a 30 second time out, switched Brian and David, and instructed them to run Indiana. We ran it on a few possessions and on one of them it actually resulted in a basket. There were a couple of other times where when we had a look, but the player didn’t take it before the play broke down. MP basically shut down the play by preventing us from making the first pass. Part of this was because Tom and David were going down the court on the same side each time, so the pass was going the same direction each time. Even if that first pass was getting there they were then executing a very high trap leading to a turn over. I think I’m going to make a few minor changes to the play, or rather teach them a variant, that should help us out in that situation. But I’m glad we had a success with it. We’re going to need it against the JCC team in the HP tourney so I’m pleased with our improvement.
Between their offense and defense they had opened up a 7 point lead at the end of the first. In many ways we were lucky it wasn’t 11 or so. During the huddle between quarters I diagramed the double screen play that they were running for the team. David, bless his heart, had already figured out the whole play, and a couple of others in the game had figured out parts of it, which is again a testament to their basketball IQs. There was a funny moment. We were kind of slow getting into our huddle. I heard their coach start to diagram their press break. A kid asked how he knew that we were going to press and the coach just replied that he knew. I smiled since I knew I had no intention of pressing, or even pressuring them at the start of the quarter. I wanted to save it until we were either in slightly more dire straights, or for the 4th quarter.
We come out pretty flat in the second quarter. They don’t have their first string in there and the subs I’ve made didn’t really hurt our quality of player out there much, so the game stays pretty much at a standstill for a bit. However, then the phantom calls started happening. In the first quarter ever call that was made was legitimate. But in that second quarter we were getting called for all sorts of things which simply weren’t there. We quickly go into bonus and then double bonus. At one point Lucas gets called for a foul which was not a foul. In fact Lucas was called for 3 fouls none of which were great calls, not surprising as coming into the game Lucas had committed only 2 fouls the whole season. After this call which was not a call, I asked what the foul was. They said Lucas’s number. I said I heard who it was on. What was the call. I say it in an inquiring tone, but it was my way of asking “what the heck?” During baseball I NEVER question the umpire. And really I hadn’t talked to these refs too much, but the officiating was highly suspect this game and it was too close of a game for me not to grow a bit frustrated.
Anyhow, we’re really out of sorts. They are basically running a trapping defense against us in the second quarter and it had some success. However, our offense FINALLY kicked into gear and we started to create some fast break opportunities. This allowed the refs to call some specious travel violations, but it also caught us up from what had been at one point a 9 point deficit to only 5. Credit for this change in offensive pace really belongs with David and Jack P, though Jack M helped as well here.
During half time I kept the talk simple. I asked what our offensive goal for the day was. I’m met with blank stares. I pointed out that it was beating the other team back down the court. That’s what we needed to be doing and weren’t doing. Then I talked about the fouls. I said that they were calling things in this game that they hadn’t in previous games and we needed to recognize that. I reminded them that basically any contact in the lane was going to be called a foul so if you were playing help defense, which we’d been doing a good job of doing, make sure you tried to meet the man outside of the lane. We talked a little bit about how to take a charge and then I sent them back out there.
The big difference in the 3rd quarter was our defense. They kept going back to the well of the play with the double screen, but it got less and less effective, until finally by the end of the quarter they stopped running it. Meanwhile, their zone started to get sloppy. We were running enough transition offense that they weren’t making their traps work. Plus having David and the Jacks being able to dribble through a lot of them helped. By the end of the 3rd quarter we’d pulled to with-in 2. And then we tied it up. We got the ball back with 9 seconds. I told David, who was taking the ball up the court, that we had plenty of time. Someone on the bench scoffed at this and I pointed out that 8 seconds was enough time for two shots. Sure enough we got a good shot off with about 3 seconds left, but it missed. Lucas grabbed the rebound and put it back in half a second before the buzzer went off and we entered the fourth quarter up by two. After Lucas made that shot, our bench exploded. Honestly you’d have thought that was the end of the game. However, seeing the pure joy of his teammates caused Lucas to flash one of the best smiles I’ve seen in a long time. That moment right there is a big reason I coach sports.
I pulled the team together and said “It’s games like this that make me love basketball. This is fun. Each quarter we’ve been doing better. We started off down by 7, narrowed it down to 5 at half and now we’re up by 2. We’ve got 7 more minutes to play and we’re going to win this game.” And sure enough the 4th quarter was ours. We were still getting called for a bunch of fouls, but they weren’t making as many of their shots, and there were less shooting fouls anyway. More importantly we were doing a great job of moving the ball around on offense. Brian hit a couple of clutch outside shots which made them guard our perimeter more giving us more players open inside. On defense we continued to hold them SO tightly. Lucas drew a key offensive foul that was a big moral booster. With about 2 minutes left we’d extended our lead to 6. Tom had started doing a chant of “Defense” from the bench that was great. Our players were pumped and their side was not. With about 90 seconds their PG, who was a pretty good player, fouled out.
Not too long after that they decided to start fouling us. Now they’d had their own share of fouls in the second half and so when they foul Scott and they went to the line, I thought it was a 1 and 1. Scott missed the first shot, and there’s no jostling or anything, which didn’t even register at the time. Jack P ends up with the ball. I tell him to shoot. At that point one of the MP players starts guarding him. Jack goes in strong for a lay-up, which he makes and there’s a whistle. Looks like it’s going to be a possible three point play.
Their coach starts asking if the foul wasn’t an intentional foul. He thought they did the signal for an intentional foul. I had been talking with someone on the bench, so while I saw the foul, I didn’t pay attention to the call. The two refs conferred and agreed it’d been a called an intentional foul. And let me say that I thought that was an awful call. I mean granted they were trying to intentionally foul us, but it wasn’t like they Scott was in any danger of being hurt. After it was agreed that it was a two shot foul, the coach gets very upset and starts going off at the refs on how they don’t even know the rules of the game. He’s really livid about the poor officiating.
Something I’d never mentioned before is that the refs who typically do our games are a pair of brothers, while the scoreboard operator is a third brother. So as the MP coach is going off on the refs, the scoreboard operator tells him to cool it. They go back and forth for a little and finally the MP coach does quiet down. Since it was an intentional foul, we get the ball back. When the ref comes over, the scoreboard guy whispers to him about the MP coach. The ref then tells the coach not to yell at the scorer’s table. This starts a heated discussion between the ref and the MP coach. At one point the ref had to say, “Coach lower your voice there are kids around.” The MP’s coach was two fold: the scoreboard operator started it, he doesn’t really have the authority to tell me to be quiet, and because of this if he talks to me I’ll talk back. While I think the scoreboard operator did have the authority to say what he said, I otherwise agree with the MP coach. This discussion, which took a minute or two, really took a lot of the good feeling out of the game, which was unfortunate. As it was going on, I even said “this is a shame.” Gordie asked me why and I said that it was taking away from our great victory. Finally that whole discussion finishes.
They keep fouling us and in the end we win by 12, 36-24, though it was far more of a 6 or 8 point victory, just because of the way the end of the game went down. Our bench leapt up with great joy. We were very happy at winning this game, no doubt about it. We went through and shook their hands. At the end I shook the hand of the MP coach and we exchanged a few pleasant words about each others team and agreed that the officiating was horrible. I had been quite pleased with the officiating we’d had up until this point, but this game was just not called well.
This game reinforces a few things. One we thrive off a transition offense. In the 3rd and 4th quarters we did a good job of running a half-court offense, but it was because we’d changed the tempo of the game. My dad, who is obviously biased, feels that the other team was out coached. I’m not sure that’s true at all. I think I’m getting a lot of credit, from not only my dad but the other parents for things that the team did naturally. Now a few of my decisions have been good decisions. So, for instance, we don’t have plays. Instead we work on drills and offense more abstractly. When MP was forced to stop using their plays and go into more just playing basketball, we were more than up for the task. So I guess I do deserve credit for that. At the same time, their coach has taught them how to trap pretty well, both full and half court, and we haven’t done that at all. So I’ll add that to our list of goals of things to do between now and the end of the season.
One thing I did, and it was a pretty conscious decision, was weight the playing time in favor of certain players. I don’t think I did as good of job of balancing our need to win with players having the right to play as I did in some other games. I’ll talk about those specific cases as we look at individual performances.
Brian – Talked with him before the game. The conversation went well and he had a great game. Took four shots and made them all. He is definitely our best jump shot player. He will be getting the start again today against WK.
Dante – Only saw 7.5 minutes of play and did much better in that time than he had in the last couple of games, pulling down 4 rebounds, a block, and a steal in that time. He’s going to start as well today. Scott and Lucas were having good games as well, and so I felt bad at the time that Dante wasn’t getting more time, but was reluctant to pull the trigger in getting him more time.
David – Another excellent game. He and Jack P helped get our game going. My dad thought he’d only sat like 3 or 4 minutes, but really he played about 21 minutes, or ¾ of a game. I don’t feel bad about that at all and David could easily be seeing that kind of playing time again in our games. Everyone is a better player with David on the court. He leads our team in points, but is also second in assists. He’s a true team player and doesn’t act like a star, so I don’t feel bad at all about giving him the chance to shine.
Gordie – Gordie got into serious foul trouble which limited his time to only 6 and a half minutes. Once again his turnovers killed us. He also lost time since I yanked him earlier than I would have in the 4th after he put up an atrocious shot while double teamed. He knew it was a bad shot, but claimed he was open when he started to take it. I responded that if he’d said that and had used good form, I would have been ok with the shot. But the shot was with awful form and in a bad spot. What was interesting was that even after this conversation he said after Lucas drew the offensive foul, “I’ve never had a coach who is nice and good before.” That was a really nice thing to hear and shows how if you’re fair and respectful to a kid, you can impose consequences (you shoot bad shots and you come out) and they won’t hold it against you.
Jack M – Here was another player I’d like to have played more in the end of the game but for whom there wasn’t a spot and so he too will get the start today. He did have 12 minutes on the game, and played well in that time. There was something slippery on the basket by our bench and so a couple of times Jack turned the ball over when it wasn’t his fault. I was pleased with how he played and feel good about giving him the start today.
Jack P – He had a great first half, as mentioned. While he missed a lot of shots in the second half, which is typical for him, I felt he was key to our victory and he was the only player I named specifically in our post game talk. He’ll start again today.
Lucas – While he didn’t rebound particularly well in his time (only 3 in 15 minutes of play) he made the basket off our zone breaker, on a nice feed from David, and was clutch when we needed it. Not his best game, but he’s an important piece of our puzzle.
Noah – A continued nothing in his 8.5 minutes of play. He’s a really nice kid and I told him that if he will go a whole continuous motion without walking or stopping that I would start him, he doesn’t really bring much to the game either offensively or defensively. Gordie, has some play making instincts, but Noah is pretty much over matched on the court. I really like him, but he just hasn’t progressed as much as a player as I’d like.
Scott – He continues to play big. He came in second on the team in minutes, with 21. In reality we’d likely have been OK if some of those minutes had gone to Dante/Lucas, but he works well with David (in other words he’s excellent at finding David as an outlet) and you’ll rarely have anything but positive energy from him.
Tom – Tom is a crucial member of the team. I played him the whole first quarter and he only saw 3 minutes of play after that, at the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th. When I took him out in the 4th he said “I stink”. I was not pleased to hear him say this, as Tom is the one who will start us cheering, as he did here. Or provide that comic relief. While he gets frustrated with himself he never is anything but positive and supportive of his teammates. While I think he’s slightly under achieving for his basketball skills, so the frustration is somewhat understandable, I don’t think he’s as bad as he thinks he is. I hope that he can have a break out game one of these games to give himself some confidence.
Today we play WK. They’ve put up a lot of points lately and I think that they’re going to upset someone soon, despite their 1-4 record. I don’t want it to be us. In my pregame talk I’m going to focus on not having a “let down game”. We’re a superior team and if we play like it, we’ll win easily. However, if we don’t play our top game we could be in trouble.
Let me just close with this: the best thing about this victory was that we were behind the whole first half. I talk about the difference between a good and a great team. And I knew they had it in them to come from behind. However, they didn’t know that. Now they do. While over confidence was starting to become a problem, and will likely rear its head again depending on how we do in the HP tourney, we needed to know that not only could we get out to a lead and hold it, but that we could come back. We didn’t believe it when we played the JCC team last time, but this team we should believe it. If we can win well today, in what could be a potential pitfall game, we’ll be in a good place for the HP tourney, which I’ll talk about more in a post tomorrow or Tuesday.
I get to the game a little bit earlier than a half hour and get to see a good portion of the 6th grade girls team getting blown out by another team. It was not a pretty sight. The MP coach arrived early and we chatted a little bit before the game. He seemed like a nice guy and we chatted with each other quite amiably. Anyhow we straggle in, with 9 of the 10 players getting there by the designated time of 5:30. I had been informed we were going to start the game 10 minutes early, which I objected to under the grounds that my whole team might not be there. However, when at 5:35 we had all buy Gordie there I said we can go ahead and Goride arrived just as we were going over to the huddle to talk.
In the pregame huddle I reminded them of some of the highlights of last night’s speech and then explained that our offensive focus would be beating them back. I wanted that ball in bounded quickly, sent to the outlet even quicker. On defense I identified our priority as helping out in our man-to-man defense. And then it was time to send our starting five of David, Tom, Brian, Scott, and Lucas out there. The good news is that this team is not particularly tall. It seems like when the two MP teams were divvying up the players MP2 took the taller players, who were slightly less athletic, while MP took the slightly more athletic players.
They come out and right off the bat run basically the same high screen play that MP2 ran. As they were running this play the third time, (they called it 1) though not on consecutive possessions I shouted out “Watch the high pick. Just like the other MP team ran.” My players adjusted accordingly and we only saw this play one other time during the game. They also ran a double pick play that proved quite effective. It led to numerous fouls being called on us and several baskets as well. They were a good shooting free throw team and we quickly fell behind. I was not surprised that we were committing so many fouls. I didn’t do a good job of calling fouls during the 3 on 3 drill we did and the Animal Rebounding drill is predicated on not calling too many fouls, so our team had gotten a little sloppy.
Meanwhile on our side of the ball, they were running a 2-1-2 defense. I basically let our offense try and work the motion and see if they could create something, but to no avail. I called a 30 second time out, switched Brian and David, and instructed them to run Indiana. We ran it on a few possessions and on one of them it actually resulted in a basket. There were a couple of other times where when we had a look, but the player didn’t take it before the play broke down. MP basically shut down the play by preventing us from making the first pass. Part of this was because Tom and David were going down the court on the same side each time, so the pass was going the same direction each time. Even if that first pass was getting there they were then executing a very high trap leading to a turn over. I think I’m going to make a few minor changes to the play, or rather teach them a variant, that should help us out in that situation. But I’m glad we had a success with it. We’re going to need it against the JCC team in the HP tourney so I’m pleased with our improvement.
Between their offense and defense they had opened up a 7 point lead at the end of the first. In many ways we were lucky it wasn’t 11 or so. During the huddle between quarters I diagramed the double screen play that they were running for the team. David, bless his heart, had already figured out the whole play, and a couple of others in the game had figured out parts of it, which is again a testament to their basketball IQs. There was a funny moment. We were kind of slow getting into our huddle. I heard their coach start to diagram their press break. A kid asked how he knew that we were going to press and the coach just replied that he knew. I smiled since I knew I had no intention of pressing, or even pressuring them at the start of the quarter. I wanted to save it until we were either in slightly more dire straights, or for the 4th quarter.
We come out pretty flat in the second quarter. They don’t have their first string in there and the subs I’ve made didn’t really hurt our quality of player out there much, so the game stays pretty much at a standstill for a bit. However, then the phantom calls started happening. In the first quarter ever call that was made was legitimate. But in that second quarter we were getting called for all sorts of things which simply weren’t there. We quickly go into bonus and then double bonus. At one point Lucas gets called for a foul which was not a foul. In fact Lucas was called for 3 fouls none of which were great calls, not surprising as coming into the game Lucas had committed only 2 fouls the whole season. After this call which was not a call, I asked what the foul was. They said Lucas’s number. I said I heard who it was on. What was the call. I say it in an inquiring tone, but it was my way of asking “what the heck?” During baseball I NEVER question the umpire. And really I hadn’t talked to these refs too much, but the officiating was highly suspect this game and it was too close of a game for me not to grow a bit frustrated.
Anyhow, we’re really out of sorts. They are basically running a trapping defense against us in the second quarter and it had some success. However, our offense FINALLY kicked into gear and we started to create some fast break opportunities. This allowed the refs to call some specious travel violations, but it also caught us up from what had been at one point a 9 point deficit to only 5. Credit for this change in offensive pace really belongs with David and Jack P, though Jack M helped as well here.
During half time I kept the talk simple. I asked what our offensive goal for the day was. I’m met with blank stares. I pointed out that it was beating the other team back down the court. That’s what we needed to be doing and weren’t doing. Then I talked about the fouls. I said that they were calling things in this game that they hadn’t in previous games and we needed to recognize that. I reminded them that basically any contact in the lane was going to be called a foul so if you were playing help defense, which we’d been doing a good job of doing, make sure you tried to meet the man outside of the lane. We talked a little bit about how to take a charge and then I sent them back out there.
The big difference in the 3rd quarter was our defense. They kept going back to the well of the play with the double screen, but it got less and less effective, until finally by the end of the quarter they stopped running it. Meanwhile, their zone started to get sloppy. We were running enough transition offense that they weren’t making their traps work. Plus having David and the Jacks being able to dribble through a lot of them helped. By the end of the 3rd quarter we’d pulled to with-in 2. And then we tied it up. We got the ball back with 9 seconds. I told David, who was taking the ball up the court, that we had plenty of time. Someone on the bench scoffed at this and I pointed out that 8 seconds was enough time for two shots. Sure enough we got a good shot off with about 3 seconds left, but it missed. Lucas grabbed the rebound and put it back in half a second before the buzzer went off and we entered the fourth quarter up by two. After Lucas made that shot, our bench exploded. Honestly you’d have thought that was the end of the game. However, seeing the pure joy of his teammates caused Lucas to flash one of the best smiles I’ve seen in a long time. That moment right there is a big reason I coach sports.
I pulled the team together and said “It’s games like this that make me love basketball. This is fun. Each quarter we’ve been doing better. We started off down by 7, narrowed it down to 5 at half and now we’re up by 2. We’ve got 7 more minutes to play and we’re going to win this game.” And sure enough the 4th quarter was ours. We were still getting called for a bunch of fouls, but they weren’t making as many of their shots, and there were less shooting fouls anyway. More importantly we were doing a great job of moving the ball around on offense. Brian hit a couple of clutch outside shots which made them guard our perimeter more giving us more players open inside. On defense we continued to hold them SO tightly. Lucas drew a key offensive foul that was a big moral booster. With about 2 minutes left we’d extended our lead to 6. Tom had started doing a chant of “Defense” from the bench that was great. Our players were pumped and their side was not. With about 90 seconds their PG, who was a pretty good player, fouled out.
Not too long after that they decided to start fouling us. Now they’d had their own share of fouls in the second half and so when they foul Scott and they went to the line, I thought it was a 1 and 1. Scott missed the first shot, and there’s no jostling or anything, which didn’t even register at the time. Jack P ends up with the ball. I tell him to shoot. At that point one of the MP players starts guarding him. Jack goes in strong for a lay-up, which he makes and there’s a whistle. Looks like it’s going to be a possible three point play.
Their coach starts asking if the foul wasn’t an intentional foul. He thought they did the signal for an intentional foul. I had been talking with someone on the bench, so while I saw the foul, I didn’t pay attention to the call. The two refs conferred and agreed it’d been a called an intentional foul. And let me say that I thought that was an awful call. I mean granted they were trying to intentionally foul us, but it wasn’t like they Scott was in any danger of being hurt. After it was agreed that it was a two shot foul, the coach gets very upset and starts going off at the refs on how they don’t even know the rules of the game. He’s really livid about the poor officiating.
Something I’d never mentioned before is that the refs who typically do our games are a pair of brothers, while the scoreboard operator is a third brother. So as the MP coach is going off on the refs, the scoreboard operator tells him to cool it. They go back and forth for a little and finally the MP coach does quiet down. Since it was an intentional foul, we get the ball back. When the ref comes over, the scoreboard guy whispers to him about the MP coach. The ref then tells the coach not to yell at the scorer’s table. This starts a heated discussion between the ref and the MP coach. At one point the ref had to say, “Coach lower your voice there are kids around.” The MP’s coach was two fold: the scoreboard operator started it, he doesn’t really have the authority to tell me to be quiet, and because of this if he talks to me I’ll talk back. While I think the scoreboard operator did have the authority to say what he said, I otherwise agree with the MP coach. This discussion, which took a minute or two, really took a lot of the good feeling out of the game, which was unfortunate. As it was going on, I even said “this is a shame.” Gordie asked me why and I said that it was taking away from our great victory. Finally that whole discussion finishes.
They keep fouling us and in the end we win by 12, 36-24, though it was far more of a 6 or 8 point victory, just because of the way the end of the game went down. Our bench leapt up with great joy. We were very happy at winning this game, no doubt about it. We went through and shook their hands. At the end I shook the hand of the MP coach and we exchanged a few pleasant words about each others team and agreed that the officiating was horrible. I had been quite pleased with the officiating we’d had up until this point, but this game was just not called well.
This game reinforces a few things. One we thrive off a transition offense. In the 3rd and 4th quarters we did a good job of running a half-court offense, but it was because we’d changed the tempo of the game. My dad, who is obviously biased, feels that the other team was out coached. I’m not sure that’s true at all. I think I’m getting a lot of credit, from not only my dad but the other parents for things that the team did naturally. Now a few of my decisions have been good decisions. So, for instance, we don’t have plays. Instead we work on drills and offense more abstractly. When MP was forced to stop using their plays and go into more just playing basketball, we were more than up for the task. So I guess I do deserve credit for that. At the same time, their coach has taught them how to trap pretty well, both full and half court, and we haven’t done that at all. So I’ll add that to our list of goals of things to do between now and the end of the season.
One thing I did, and it was a pretty conscious decision, was weight the playing time in favor of certain players. I don’t think I did as good of job of balancing our need to win with players having the right to play as I did in some other games. I’ll talk about those specific cases as we look at individual performances.
Brian – Talked with him before the game. The conversation went well and he had a great game. Took four shots and made them all. He is definitely our best jump shot player. He will be getting the start again today against WK.
Dante – Only saw 7.5 minutes of play and did much better in that time than he had in the last couple of games, pulling down 4 rebounds, a block, and a steal in that time. He’s going to start as well today. Scott and Lucas were having good games as well, and so I felt bad at the time that Dante wasn’t getting more time, but was reluctant to pull the trigger in getting him more time.
David – Another excellent game. He and Jack P helped get our game going. My dad thought he’d only sat like 3 or 4 minutes, but really he played about 21 minutes, or ¾ of a game. I don’t feel bad about that at all and David could easily be seeing that kind of playing time again in our games. Everyone is a better player with David on the court. He leads our team in points, but is also second in assists. He’s a true team player and doesn’t act like a star, so I don’t feel bad at all about giving him the chance to shine.
Gordie – Gordie got into serious foul trouble which limited his time to only 6 and a half minutes. Once again his turnovers killed us. He also lost time since I yanked him earlier than I would have in the 4th after he put up an atrocious shot while double teamed. He knew it was a bad shot, but claimed he was open when he started to take it. I responded that if he’d said that and had used good form, I would have been ok with the shot. But the shot was with awful form and in a bad spot. What was interesting was that even after this conversation he said after Lucas drew the offensive foul, “I’ve never had a coach who is nice and good before.” That was a really nice thing to hear and shows how if you’re fair and respectful to a kid, you can impose consequences (you shoot bad shots and you come out) and they won’t hold it against you.
Jack M – Here was another player I’d like to have played more in the end of the game but for whom there wasn’t a spot and so he too will get the start today. He did have 12 minutes on the game, and played well in that time. There was something slippery on the basket by our bench and so a couple of times Jack turned the ball over when it wasn’t his fault. I was pleased with how he played and feel good about giving him the start today.
Jack P – He had a great first half, as mentioned. While he missed a lot of shots in the second half, which is typical for him, I felt he was key to our victory and he was the only player I named specifically in our post game talk. He’ll start again today.
Lucas – While he didn’t rebound particularly well in his time (only 3 in 15 minutes of play) he made the basket off our zone breaker, on a nice feed from David, and was clutch when we needed it. Not his best game, but he’s an important piece of our puzzle.
Noah – A continued nothing in his 8.5 minutes of play. He’s a really nice kid and I told him that if he will go a whole continuous motion without walking or stopping that I would start him, he doesn’t really bring much to the game either offensively or defensively. Gordie, has some play making instincts, but Noah is pretty much over matched on the court. I really like him, but he just hasn’t progressed as much as a player as I’d like.
Scott – He continues to play big. He came in second on the team in minutes, with 21. In reality we’d likely have been OK if some of those minutes had gone to Dante/Lucas, but he works well with David (in other words he’s excellent at finding David as an outlet) and you’ll rarely have anything but positive energy from him.
Tom – Tom is a crucial member of the team. I played him the whole first quarter and he only saw 3 minutes of play after that, at the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th. When I took him out in the 4th he said “I stink”. I was not pleased to hear him say this, as Tom is the one who will start us cheering, as he did here. Or provide that comic relief. While he gets frustrated with himself he never is anything but positive and supportive of his teammates. While I think he’s slightly under achieving for his basketball skills, so the frustration is somewhat understandable, I don’t think he’s as bad as he thinks he is. I hope that he can have a break out game one of these games to give himself some confidence.
Today we play WK. They’ve put up a lot of points lately and I think that they’re going to upset someone soon, despite their 1-4 record. I don’t want it to be us. In my pregame talk I’m going to focus on not having a “let down game”. We’re a superior team and if we play like it, we’ll win easily. However, if we don’t play our top game we could be in trouble.
Let me just close with this: the best thing about this victory was that we were behind the whole first half. I talk about the difference between a good and a great team. And I knew they had it in them to come from behind. However, they didn’t know that. Now they do. While over confidence was starting to become a problem, and will likely rear its head again depending on how we do in the HP tourney, we needed to know that not only could we get out to a lead and hold it, but that we could come back. We didn’t believe it when we played the JCC team last time, but this team we should believe it. If we can win well today, in what could be a potential pitfall game, we’ll be in a good place for the HP tourney, which I’ll talk about more in a post tomorrow or Tuesday.
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