HP House League Game

Well yesterday was a night full of basketball. It was the night of the first games for house league basketball in HP so I went out to cheer for my players. Unfortunately, due to GL’s practice I could only see about 1 and a half games. Being a house league they basically do mass substitutions every 5 minutes (with two 15 minute halves) which of course limited not only the time I got to see the players but also the time I got to see the players play against each other.

In the first game I saw Adam and Zach on one time, and Jack A on the other. Zach took over the game on offense. Kevin, who if you read my baseball blog you’ll remember is Park District employee, was officiating the game and told me how he thinks Zach is the best player in HP in the age group. This might be true, but he’s not so far above, at least from what I’ve seen. Anyhow, Zach’s play was definitely impressive. Adam and Jack presented a more mixed picture. Adam was acting as the point guard for his team and had the tendency to dribble the ball straight down the free throw line, rather than through the lane. He would then frequently get trapped there with the ball. If he’s getting trapped there in house, I fear what’ll happen to him in travel. His man to man defense continues to be suspect. On the good side, he hustled. Anytime the other team got a fast break, he hustled to get back and helped force some misses in that manner. He also found himself near the basket a lot on shots (see suspect man to man defense) but pulled down 4 rebounds, one of the higher totals for any individual player, despite being one of the shortest players out there. Jack did a great job of penetrating when there was a slower pace, and creating fast breaks. He didn’t always convert but he got good shots. He was particularly effective at doing the jump stop on the fast break to make pursuers over shoot him. The mixed bag part comes from the fact that it seemed like every time he touched the ball he ended up shooting. Were they smart shots? Yeah they were all good shots. But he’s going to have a harder time driving through the lane in travel than in house and I worry that we’re still going to see the same amount of shots from him as he would drive with his head down, hardly a good way to be ready to dish the ball off to a teammate.

Unfortunately because I had to get to the GL practice, I only was able to see about half of the next game which featured Ben and Jon on one team and Jacob on the other. Also fun was that Jeremy F’s and Matt A’s (from baseball) little brothers were on one team while Matt S’s brother was on the other, so I knew a lot of the kids out there. Ben and Jon were both used as point guards for their teams, a role that they will not be playing on our team, so that limited the value I was able to see in that capacity. Their defense and hustle were both excellent. However, Jon got winded very quickly, just as he had in practice. I think this means I will be, for the time being, using him in short bursts, of say 2 minutes with him frequently rotating back in. Ben played well overall except at one point when there was a small kid on the ground on the other team and Ben was clearly tempted to reach in and just take the ball from him, but didn’t. So the instinct was there but not the killer attitude to follow through. Hopefully I can nudge him towards following through on that. Then there is Jacob. Jacob is a very bright kid and enjoys talking with me. So I really like the kid. He does a lot of things right, such as space the floor. In fact, I was pleased in general with how well my players moved around the floor and kept it spaced. However, Jacob lacks many of the athletic skills to full take advantage of his technical knowledge and is not a good dribbler to boot. Not sure how much I can do about the athleticism but I can certainly work on his dribbling.

I was glad I got to see these games and was sad I didn’t get a chance to see my other 5 players play.