Game 1 - Spartans vs HP

I get to the gym before 2 o’clock. Already the HP coach (HP being our opponents) and one of the HP players is there. It’s actually one of the HP players I know and I chat with the father a little. By the time 2 rolls around about half the HP team is there. At 2:05 Tom shows up. That’s just fine with me. I purposely only told our players to get there 15 minutes early. These kids are 9 and I figured the longer they were at the gym, the more likely they were to get nervous. 15 minutes, if they were on time, was more than enough time to get loose, have me talk to them and get ready for the game. Sure enough by 2:15 our whole team is there. I’m having them do lay-up lines since I haven’t taught them anything better to do. Finding a pre-game ritual was something I wanted to do, and haven’t done. There certainly hasn’t been enough time to teach one so I don’t feel too awful about that.

A few minutes before the game starts they ask me for “Coaches and Captains”. And I’m like Captain? I don’t have a Captain. I grab Tom. Poor Tom looks like he’s going to pee in his pants he’s so nervous. The kid from HP seems to be equally as nervous. Ref goes over several rules including one about “team control” that frankly seems to go over both my head and that of the opposing coach. After the meeting, I call the team in. I have Tom recap the important points (good sportsmanship, tuck in your shirts) and then go over our three focuses:
On offense we need to pick away
On defense we need to hustle back
On the bench we need to be cheering on our teammates.

We talk about having fun. And it’s time to start our game. I lead us in a cheer of Spartans (our team name) and it’s time to go out. Except I forgot to name our starters. Whoops. I name our starting five of Jack M, who will bring the ball up, Gordie, Tom, who will be our in bounder, Jack P, and Dante.

It takes a while for them to match up, but they eventually match up. HP is bigger than we are but more in terms of weight than height. HP gets the tip-off and we’re underway. The first quarter is ugly. HP comes out in a 2-3 and our team is lost on offense. We haven’t really practiced against the zone so I’m not surprised. On the good side our defense is DOMINATING. There are a lot of travel calls on both sides, though more on HP than on us. HP is also committing a lot of fouls. I’m happy. And do you know who is looking like the best player on the court? Jack M. He’s doing lots of the little things that make a difference. For instance, he’s not afraid to double up when the opportunity presents himself. He’s also doing a good job of keeping the floor balanced.

The quarter ends and I just know, from how they’ve been playing, and more importantly how their coach has been acting, that HP is going to come out with a press. Have we practiced how to break a press? Not so much. I explain how I want Lucas, who is in, to be back setting screens for Gordie and Noah. Jack M is going to try and get open deep. The good news is these kids are 9. So when the press comes, we’re able to break it. As the quarter goes on, we start to be able to break it with more regularity and start to find some open baskets. Our defense continues to play well. My one big coaching decision, which pays huge dividends for us, is to have Tom simply guard the point guard the full length of the court. I tell him not to worry about stealing it, but just pressure him. This leads to NUMEROUS turnovers. In fact I believe they only got 2 or 3 shots off once we started doing this . Their point guard was dribbling right into the corner or throwing the ball away or whatever. We go into half up 14-8, but we’re in control of this game.

At half I stay up beat. I talk about how it’s a close game but we’re in control. Our team doesn’t really appear to be tired at all which is also a good thing. The buzzer goes off and we go back in. As there is no press allowed in the 3rd quarter I take the trailer off, but do have Jack meet the point guard at half court. Again they don’t look so good.

As the game goes on the tempo seems to be increasing. The 3rd is a low scoring quarter, but we manage to extend our lead to 22-10. This means we’re not even allowed to press, being up by more than 10.

And in the 4th quarter, we basically run them ragged. Our defense creates turnovers and we transition these turnovers into points. Despite the fact that we have 7 players and they have 12, they’re tired and we’re not. HP never stops with its full court press, which means that we continue to blow by them and we end up winning, with ease 34-12. I try to slow them down at the end of the game, but basically with HP playing full court press, I can only slow down the game so much.

What a relief. We won and we won easily, though honestly HP missed a lot of lay-ups and we made quite a few jumpers. I think to a certain extent their coach’s commitment to an up tempo game was a mistake. They could have out muscled us but didn’t. We won because of our ability to create transition baskets and because our defense was smothering.

If we had a game ball to give, it’d go to Jack M. He did so much right. One thing we need to work on is that when he’s bringing up the ball he always makes his first pass to his left.

Jack P frustrated me. He was great at creating transition opportunities, both as a defender and as an outlet on offense, but when we were in our “set” offense he took too many shots. In fact he took nearly twice as many shots as our next highest shooter (14 shots to 8). Of course we also led the team in steals with five. So I will take the good with the bad.

Lucas looked basically lost out there. On numerous occasions he had trouble finding and defending our man. On a couple of set plays on in bounds his man got ridiculously open, but fortunately they missed the shots. He did moderately well on the boards, with 4 rebounds, but he lost a couple of others that should have been his.

Dante was a beast underneath getting 9 rebounds. He scored three 4th quarter baskets when he essentially had easy lay-ups thanks to our beating them down the court. In other words he did exactly what we needed him to do. He didn’t play tight enough defense at times, and the HP coach wanted more plays where their Center just backed Dante down. Of course our guards were so smothering it made it hard to get those inside post passes.

Gordie played some good D, but his shot selection is poor. He’s a good shooter, but I am going to rapidly lose patience for shooting shots when guarded by 3 players.

Noah was, perhaps, our worst player out there (actually according to Win Score, a measurement of productivity that I use, it was Gordie, followed by Noah). He looked confused on defense and didn’t really do much of anything on offense. Starting Jack over Noah provided to be the right call, in fact it wasn’t even close.

Tom did about as I anticipated. When the H’s are back and he can play more guard, I think he’ll do better. I don’t feel like I’m taking best advantage of Tom at the moment but I think as we settle more into our motion offense, Tom will see more touches and get shots as he understands what needs to be done.

On the whole, playing time was pretty evenly distributed. Lucas had 15 minutes of playing time, still more than half the game, and he had the fewest minutes of anyone on the team. Dante, Tom, and Jack M all had about 23 minutes to lead the team. Distributing minutes with 7 players is, obviously, easier than with 9 or 10, but I’m glad that everyone got quality play time.

We have no practice this coming week and no game either next weekend so my next update will not be for a little more than a week. I’m glad we won. I don’t know if I can claim too much credit for it, as they did things well that we hadn’t really practiced outright though several of the things we did in practice, such as following shots, did seem to pay-off. However, this victory belongs to them. And let me say what a relief it is not to be looking at a season as rough as baseball was. I just couldn’t take it.

In the post game speech, I talked about how it was a long season. We should be pleased with our effort today, and named our defense (obviously) as something we’d done well. But we have things to work on as well. But a 20 point victory never hurt anyone, especially without our best player.