Tourney Report: JCC Game

Jack M could not hide his thoughts that we were going to lose to JCC. During the time in between games I had taken some time to talk to him, again, about the importance of a positive attitude. Now in fairness, I felt a good deal of trepidation myself about the game, but the idea of having a positive team attitude is an incredibly important thing to me. I also talked to David about his frustration. As the HP game slipped away, David’s frustration grew and grew and this was not helpful for us as a team or for him individually. I approached him under the guise of “what is frustrating you out there?” and we had a good conversation. I emphasized the need to use the whole team. It was a good discussion.

After a little bit of warm-up, our team sat down for our pre-game meeting. The pre-game meeting revolved around, #3, Luke. When we played the team last time they were basically a one man show and so we talked about forcing Luke to his left. I talked about how happy I was to have the chance to play this team again since I didn’t think we had done our best the last time we played them. I said that I don’t think anyone, including me, was ready last time for how good this team was. We would be ready this time and it would make the difference. At least, I thought to myself, I hoped it would.

The game began. Luke tried his best to go to the right, but David, being the monster defender that he was, kept forcing him left. Luke was clearly uncomfortable with this. His coaches kept yelling “If he’s giving you the left, go left.” The game was hard fought the whole first half. We started off strong, as I think the HP game had us in game shape. The first half was fought tooth and nail, but by half time we were up to a four point lead.

A big controversy occurred late in the first half. JCC called its second time-out, as we continued to build momentum. It was clear what had happened: the rules as sent to me via e-mail said 3 time outs per half, a lot of time outs. I asked a question about this before our first game and was told 3 per game but obviously the JCC coaches had never been informed. In the end the decision was made to give each team 3 time-outs per half. This meant that my saving of all my time outs was for naught.

It was easy to be positive at half. The focus was on momentum. We also talked about the 1-3-1 zone they would sometime play. In the first half the JCC had done a good job of forcing us to score in transition or to settle for longer shots. We were fighting hard for rebounds and getting some put-back points, but the zone was doing exactly what it had been designed to do. I pointed out a few ways we could do better against the zone.

For subbing purposes I had every 5 minutes inserted 2 or 3 (and once in a while 4) players into the game. So I sort divided the halves into 4 parts. During this first part the game remained virtually unchanged. We did have our most remarkable possession of the season. We got the ball at half and held onto the ball, basically just passing it around, for 54 seconds before we found a good shot. The patience on that possession was just amazing. We didn’t end up with a basket, but it was an just an incredible display of passing and team work.

During the second part of the half I rested David. Jack P did an admirable job, both here and in the first half of guarding Luke. Where as David sat in both halves, Luke sat about 2 minutes, if even that, the whole game.

It was during the 3rd part that things changed dramatically. We were up by 4 points about half way through the part when Luke went on a tear. He started stealing every ball around him and taking them in for baskets. We got a basket here and there, but he got 7 points, including an incredibly lucky 3 point shot, in a space of only about 2 minutes. Luke’s 3 point shooting was actually a big bonus for us. There were several times where he just settled for the three, with his coach’s encouragement, and he missed a lot of the time and since we’re a good rebounding team we got the rebound a lot of the time. I’m guessing that in the long run this might not be a bad strategy, since many teams won’t out rebound them, but I am about as virulently against shooting regular 3 pointers at this age as you can get.

So now we’re entering the last part of the game and we’re down. And then we get down by some more, losing by 3 with about 90 seconds to go. I call our second time out (I had called one after the lucky three to try and calm the momentum, which was largely successful) and tried to get our team back on track. With 30 seconds left to go we narrow the game to 1. We get the ball with 14 seconds left in the game and I call our final time-out. I explain that there’s plenty of time left and we need to get a good shot. I tell them that I want to work the ball around since it’s likely we would get a good shot that way. My thinking was that they would so overload coverage on David, who has been playing his normally fantastic game, that they would leave someone else open.

JCC came out of the time-out and their defense was tough. We made a few passes around the perimeter of their zone and nothing was happening. Finally David gets the ball back. The clock is ticking down. I call on him to shoot. He pulls up just behind the free throw line and NAILS a jumper with 2.5 seconds left. JCC immediately calls their final time-out. In the huddle my speech is simple “We all know where this ball is going to go, to Luke. Make sure they in-bound the ball so the clock starts, and then pick-up your men at half court. Don’t foul.”

The ball is in bounded. Luke sprints up the court. He launches his final shot on the sideline, by our bench, just behind the half court line. The ball goes up and it’s got a real shot. My heart absolutely sinks as the ball looks might good. But it turns out to be long and we win the game at the buzzer. Luke literally crumples to the floor.

We did it. We had beaten, at the last second, the one team who had beaten us. Our team goes wild. We shake hands and I immediately pulled away by the conference organizer, before I can even talk to my team, for an explanation of some time changes for the next day. At the time I didn’t realize this, but our win basically finished us in second in our pool. We did discuss the various possibilities, but I predicted that JCC would blow-out HP. Eric, the HP Park District tournament organizer was skeptical, but I knew that’s what would happen. When he called later, he told me I was right and that we’d gotten the second seed.
I was so happy that we beat the JCC team. As the game went on I grew to dislike the JCC coaches more and more. They were loud. They didn’t promote team basketball. Their players didn’t look like they were having as much fun as we were. After the game as we shook hands they were clearly stunned. While we’d both said before the game how much we were looking forward to this match-up, I honestly don’t believe they thought for a moment we could beat them. What is funny is that after the first game we’d played against them I’d told one of the coaches how Luke was just not comfortable being forced left. So it should have come as no surprise that we forced him left. As we were shaking hands I had said “I think we’ll play each other again” with the only way of that happening is if we met in the championship. If we could beat the JCC, at that moment I knew that we really could win it all.