Tourney Report: Spartans vs. WM

Following our dramatic last second victory over the JCC we looked at the following as our “road to the championship”:

12 game versus WM – The team is in the A division and was winless when we played them.

If we won that we’d have a 4 o’clock game against the winner of the other pool, which was a team called Karzen. Basically they were a group of players recruited by this guy named Karzen from a tennis academy in a nearby suburb (this was the A team of the same group that had played and defeated HP in overtime).

If we won both of those games we would be in a 5 o’clock championship. JCC had a similar path to the finals.

Now our 12 game against WM was not going to start on time since WM had a game at 11 (owing to the fact that on the original schedule the earliest Sunday game was to be 2 and so they’d rescheduled a league game). The Park District thought we’d start at 12:15, but I always found that to be an optimistic outlook. Still I had the team get there a little before noon in anticipation of an “on-time” start.

Of course this was not to be. We ended up playing a couple of games of lightening with a ref (I even knocked him out of one game, which we joked wasn’t likely my best move). There was a lot of random waiting. The best thing to come out of the waiting was that the team agreed we’d go to lunch following the game.

Finally just after 12:30 they got their fifth player there. We started the game moments later, when they had six or seven of their players there. I had been warned by several players on my team that they had a kid who was HUGE. They weren’t exaggerating. This kid was likely 5”5’ and 190 pounds and, as someone on our team (I think it was Noah) later said, “I didn’t realize a kid so big could also be so fast”. For whatever reason, my guess being he’d played a lot earlier, he didn’t start.

With the exception of this player at center we were pretty much stronger than them top to bottom. By the third part of the first half we had the game solidly in hand, though certainly not out of reach of WM. After half, with a lineup that did not include David nor Scott (who had the thankless job of guarding the huge guy most of the time and consequently had worked himself into foul trouble) we came out and went on a role. We increased, in 5 minutes, or lead from 5 to 15. This would not have been a lineup I’d have expected to go on such a run, but several people seemed to get hot at once including Jack M, who did a nice job of playing point and on defense after having had a couple of lackluster games at point, and Lucas, who finally seemed willing to take shots in the game and not just on put backs. After that it was never really a game. We won the game by 18.

Of note was that the ref who played lightening with us was a real jerk towards the opposing coach. At one point in the first half the coach was unhappy with a travel call (based on the kid carrying the ball). The ref said something to the effect of “Coach if you taught your players how to play I wouldn’t have had to call that travel”. Which was like WHOA. Then at the start of the second half, WM was EXCEEDINGLY slow at coming out of their huddle. In order to make-up for lost time, half time had been shortened to 1 minute, so basically just a time-out. Finally WM comes out of the huddle. There is then some confusion over which way they were going and the ref called over and back on the kid. His argument was that he’d stated several times which way they were going, he had. But c’mon they’re 9 years old. He didn’t favor us, in the sense that calls were called the same going both ways, but I was still glad to know that we wouldn’t be seeing him again (he’d mentioned that this was his only game of the day officiating).

It was really interesting because this was the first game where we were clearly out rebounded. When he was in there their center grabbed a HUGE amount of the boards, offensively and defensively. He also displayed a pretty soft touch on farther out shots. This kid needs a little help on his inside offensive game, and assuming puberty doesn’t completely wreck his coordination, could be a dominating force, but it was not to be on Sunday. In a gam

I had entered the tournament figuring us to be a middle of the road A team in terms of quality of play. The game against HP did nothing to change that estimate. When I crunched the stats of the JCC game I discovered we’d played nearly perfectly. Turnovers were WAY down compared to our normal games, even ones against inferior teams like NF. This took some of the wind out of my sails. I was VERY confident that we would see JCC again entering the day, as I thought we matched up well against the teams we’d have to play today. Knowing that we had managed to just squeak out a 1 point victory when we played our best game, statistically, of the season? Not encouraging. The only redeeming factor was that while most players were at their best, David’s shooting percentage was terrible. It was actually bad in both of the games Saturday, so that was a ray of hope. Of course that could also mean we had fallen into the trap of “David feels like he has to do everything to help us win”, which wasn’t so far from the truth in the JCC game.

On the other hand, where we might have won the JCC game because of one player, this was our best team game yet. Every player on the team, except Tom, had 2 or more shots. The most anyone shot was 10 shots and most players had multiple good looks. Several parents remarked how well we spread around the ball. It was certainly a good TEAM game. This gave me some hope about our future chances should we meet the JCC in the finals.

I had expected to win this game easily, and it was nice that we did so and it was then off to lunch we went.