Well Wednesday’s practice was not a good one. Some of this was my fault, as while I had a list of things that I wanted to accomplish at the practice, I didn’t have a detailed practice plan laid out to give structure. And I definitely didn’t bring my A-Game in terms of handling them. However, some of it was definitely them. Scott, for instance, was absolutely off the wall. And the fact that only two kids had taken time to watch the video of how our zone break actually worked in action, meant that several of them felt emboldened to whine about how this play didn’t work last year. And it didn’t, but that’s exactly why I decided to take a new teaching approach to it.
Besides work on the zone offense, I also wanted to work on blocking out. And they simply aren’t doing a very good job of it. And that has to be my teaching right there. That part is frustrating to me, because I know that the teaching of fundamentals is a weakness for me. So being able to recognize the problem, work hard to put together the teaching points, and then still not be able to teach it? Ugh.
That leads us to last night. When I get to the gym, I arrive to find us locked out and basically the school is dark. The team arrives, but parents don’t leave as we struggle to find out if we can get in. Finally, I try to send the team home, but they won’t go. Just as they start to straggle off, Jack M sees a janitor through a window. And suddenly we have a practice.
I made sure to come into practice with a strong plan. I really struggled putting together the practice. On the one hand we had a lot of fundamentals that I wanted to go over. On the other hand after yesterday’s poor practice I wanted to make sure we had some fun. We started practice a few minutes late as I had to raise the baskets from 7 feet to 10. I word hard to be in a better mood, and in control, than I was yesterday. And overall it’s a better practice. We worked first on setting screens. During the game I played with them, they went a little overboard in terms of setting screens, but they certainly had the idea down, which was good to see. Following this we did some press break work. After showing them the principles I want to see (set screens off the ball, stay away from the corners, pass the ball, and come to the ball to receive a pass) we did a 3 on 5 press. Towards the end of the drill the offense started doing better. I like this 3 on 5 setup more than the 2 on 3 I’d done with HP last Saturday. I think we’ll do the 3 on 5 with HP this weekend as well. David really wants to just dribble his way out of trouble. Well it wasn’t working. I reminded them how they can literally pass the ball far up the court. Scott, being a baseball person, is likely our one who will do that more than most.
To conclude practice I let them scrimmage as a reward for persevering about practice where I was ready to send them home. To pick teams I had them randomly line up and shoot a free throw. The first six to make it were on Team A, the five others on Team B. David was on the team which missed and moaned about how I picked unfair teams again. I pointed out that I didn’t pick the teams. He still moaned. Anyhow, the scrimmage went fairly well. After initially doing well, we started to bunch up on the court, but I reminded them not to do it and it stopped. Overall fun was had.
I’m really glad we had practice yesterday. I feel like some learning was done and put everyone, or at least me, in better spirits after Wednesday. Saturday we play PL at home. I’ve decided if the team won’t follow through with watching the videos I made at home, I’ll make them watch it before the game, as Tom and Dante, who’d watched the videos, were rattling off my teaching points and really seemed to “get” how the pattern might work. Of course they’re two of the sharper kids to begin with, so that might be why they got it. We’ll see, either way on Sunday, I suppose.
Showing posts with label Dante. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dante. Show all posts
Friday, November 16, 2007
Friday, October 26, 2007
GL Practice
After the tumultuous nature of the practice on Wednesday I was pleased to have a practice run without a hitch last night. I get to practice super early as I wanted to have a chance to just shoot around myself. And to my amazement, waiting in the gym 25 minutes early is Tom. We both just shoot around for a bit and I ask him who he thinks will be next person to come. He takes Cameron. I take the triplets. I was right, though Cameron did arrive fairly early.
Promptly at 7:30 we start practice and it is time for the Quiz part 2. It’s basically the same quiz as before except I changed the vocabulary section (and made it easier) and changed the Yes/No questions for the offense. I grade as they do continuous motion. I go through grading and I had already decided to give them a 1 question leeway. I also decide one question isn’t fair, so I don’t count that. In the end the team has earned 10 suicides (or rather 20 half suicides). Dante, in our free throw practicing, has made all of his practice free throws and he had told me at the first practice he worked over the summer to get up to 90%. After he shot his two free throws following continuous motion, I asked if he could do it under pressure. He said he didn’t know, so I decided to put him to the test. I tell the team that Dante will shoot 2 free throws and can knock-off 2 suicides for each one he makes. Dante goes ahead and makes both. It was beautiful. We run the first three suicides there.
After a water break we go into our shell drill. This time I let the offense move around, at half speed, but they cannot dribble. Brian, thinking he’s found a flaw, points out after one correction that there’s no point in guarding his man when he’s far beyond the 3 point line. I agree. We do a fairly good job with this, maintaining the right distance for on ball, 1 pass, and 2 passes even with the men in motion. One interesting moment: I had blown the whistle to make a coaching point. I make the point, and David quickly goes over to the team and whispers something quietly. I have them reset, give somebody the ball, and all of a sudden there’s a pass to a wide open Lucas for a shot, thanks to a screen David had set. I remind them that they need to call out screens. It was a nice thought by David.
After this, we go into Animal rebounding. I had divided them up into roughly centers/forwards and guards. In our first group, Scott came out on top, god bless his aggressive heart, with Justin finishing in last. In the second group it was Jack M who finished first, with Cameron finishing a strong second, and Andrew who finished in last. Someone, I forgot who, said that he thinks it was unfair since the two new players both finished last. I pointed out that Cameron finished second in his grouping, though I have to admit that the new comers are at a disadvantage there. Justin in particular looked like a deer in the headlights during the drill. I expect he’ll figure out a way to do better. More disconcerting to me was Brian who simply decided he wasn’t going to try. When it got down to 3 he put forth some effort and avoided finishing last, but his lack of effort there cost him a starting spot. I haven’t decided if we’ll do this again Thursday to have a chance to redeem himself, but giving up on a drill because it’s tough is simply not OK. Since I have a lot of kids who could make a case for themselves as starters, and more importantly finishers, a player doing something like this helps me focus. I think at this point we’re looking at a starting five of David, Scott, Lucas, Justin, and either Dante or Jack P.
Following Animal Rebounding, I introduced our new out of bounds play. I had each player run through the play once at each position they might be at. We’ll be spending a fair chunk of time at our next practice perfecting this. It was interesting that most of the team, when I said we’d have a new out of bounds play, were happy about this. David, however, liked the old play saying he got a lot of good shots (he did this privately, so I was happy to discuss it with him). This was, to a certain extent, true. However, I think any out of bounds play is going to work for David. My response was that I needed a play that could be understood and executed by the team, and which would result in a few direct scores.
Finally we concluded with some 2 on 3, 3 on 2. The 2 players did a MUCH better job of getting the ball across half court. Cameron, in particular, showed improvement at not picking up his ball. At tryouts he made a strong case for himself, but had been unimpressive at our first few practices. This practice was a reminder that I picked him to be on the team for a reason. If he’s inconsistent, hopefully as we move through the season he’ll develop some consistency.
We then concluded with our other half of suicides from the quiz. Justin failed to finish one of them on time so they had to re-run one. When someone who was standing on the opposite side of Justin and didn’t see this, asked who didn’t finished, I was glad that my immediate response was “the team”. I gave Brian a chance to give them some added time for the first two by making a sink or swim free throw and he missed. I then offered someone the chance to try and make two free throws to give them a minute for the last suicide, which would basically let them jog. Andrew took up the challenge and missed. I can’t decide if this kid thinks he’s better than he really is, or if he’s struggling to make the adjustment from the shorter hoops they use in Small Fry, what he played last season, to the 10 foot hoops we use. It’s probably a little bit of both.
After that it was time to go home. Except that I didn’t get to head straight home. Tom’s father forgot to come pick him up so Tom and I got to spend 15 minutes hanging out together. He’s a very serious young man. We started talking about shows we Tivo and he mentioned the Simpsons, Family Guy, “and of course the News”. We then talked a little bit about the wild fires in California. Wednesday when we were heading out of practice he mentioned how he barely ever had to run a suicide last year because he got a lot of permissions. I had agreed that this was true, and added it’s the reason he made the team this year because he’s such a hard worker. Thinking about it later, I realized that this was the wrong message to send to him. So when we were shooting around tonight before practice I told him that I wanted to change what I said last night. I told him that he made the team not only because he is a hard worker, but also because he is a good basketball player and in fact that Coach Jon had him as one of the top ten players out there. This is a kid that needs to hear that he’s got the basketball skills to keep up with everyone else.
I had announced, while giving them a chance to rest after a suicide that there would be no practice next Wednesday (Halloween). That gives us 1 practice before our first game. I have to admit to being a little nervous about this since our first game is against MP1, a team who we can beat, but who could also beat us. If we’re going to have a winning season, we’ll need to win games like this. Hopefully with David back in full force, and with the addition of our new players we’ll have a winning effort.
Promptly at 7:30 we start practice and it is time for the Quiz part 2. It’s basically the same quiz as before except I changed the vocabulary section (and made it easier) and changed the Yes/No questions for the offense. I grade as they do continuous motion. I go through grading and I had already decided to give them a 1 question leeway. I also decide one question isn’t fair, so I don’t count that. In the end the team has earned 10 suicides (or rather 20 half suicides). Dante, in our free throw practicing, has made all of his practice free throws and he had told me at the first practice he worked over the summer to get up to 90%. After he shot his two free throws following continuous motion, I asked if he could do it under pressure. He said he didn’t know, so I decided to put him to the test. I tell the team that Dante will shoot 2 free throws and can knock-off 2 suicides for each one he makes. Dante goes ahead and makes both. It was beautiful. We run the first three suicides there.
After a water break we go into our shell drill. This time I let the offense move around, at half speed, but they cannot dribble. Brian, thinking he’s found a flaw, points out after one correction that there’s no point in guarding his man when he’s far beyond the 3 point line. I agree. We do a fairly good job with this, maintaining the right distance for on ball, 1 pass, and 2 passes even with the men in motion. One interesting moment: I had blown the whistle to make a coaching point. I make the point, and David quickly goes over to the team and whispers something quietly. I have them reset, give somebody the ball, and all of a sudden there’s a pass to a wide open Lucas for a shot, thanks to a screen David had set. I remind them that they need to call out screens. It was a nice thought by David.
After this, we go into Animal rebounding. I had divided them up into roughly centers/forwards and guards. In our first group, Scott came out on top, god bless his aggressive heart, with Justin finishing in last. In the second group it was Jack M who finished first, with Cameron finishing a strong second, and Andrew who finished in last. Someone, I forgot who, said that he thinks it was unfair since the two new players both finished last. I pointed out that Cameron finished second in his grouping, though I have to admit that the new comers are at a disadvantage there. Justin in particular looked like a deer in the headlights during the drill. I expect he’ll figure out a way to do better. More disconcerting to me was Brian who simply decided he wasn’t going to try. When it got down to 3 he put forth some effort and avoided finishing last, but his lack of effort there cost him a starting spot. I haven’t decided if we’ll do this again Thursday to have a chance to redeem himself, but giving up on a drill because it’s tough is simply not OK. Since I have a lot of kids who could make a case for themselves as starters, and more importantly finishers, a player doing something like this helps me focus. I think at this point we’re looking at a starting five of David, Scott, Lucas, Justin, and either Dante or Jack P.
Following Animal Rebounding, I introduced our new out of bounds play. I had each player run through the play once at each position they might be at. We’ll be spending a fair chunk of time at our next practice perfecting this. It was interesting that most of the team, when I said we’d have a new out of bounds play, were happy about this. David, however, liked the old play saying he got a lot of good shots (he did this privately, so I was happy to discuss it with him). This was, to a certain extent, true. However, I think any out of bounds play is going to work for David. My response was that I needed a play that could be understood and executed by the team, and which would result in a few direct scores.
Finally we concluded with some 2 on 3, 3 on 2. The 2 players did a MUCH better job of getting the ball across half court. Cameron, in particular, showed improvement at not picking up his ball. At tryouts he made a strong case for himself, but had been unimpressive at our first few practices. This practice was a reminder that I picked him to be on the team for a reason. If he’s inconsistent, hopefully as we move through the season he’ll develop some consistency.
We then concluded with our other half of suicides from the quiz. Justin failed to finish one of them on time so they had to re-run one. When someone who was standing on the opposite side of Justin and didn’t see this, asked who didn’t finished, I was glad that my immediate response was “the team”. I gave Brian a chance to give them some added time for the first two by making a sink or swim free throw and he missed. I then offered someone the chance to try and make two free throws to give them a minute for the last suicide, which would basically let them jog. Andrew took up the challenge and missed. I can’t decide if this kid thinks he’s better than he really is, or if he’s struggling to make the adjustment from the shorter hoops they use in Small Fry, what he played last season, to the 10 foot hoops we use. It’s probably a little bit of both.
After that it was time to go home. Except that I didn’t get to head straight home. Tom’s father forgot to come pick him up so Tom and I got to spend 15 minutes hanging out together. He’s a very serious young man. We started talking about shows we Tivo and he mentioned the Simpsons, Family Guy, “and of course the News”. We then talked a little bit about the wild fires in California. Wednesday when we were heading out of practice he mentioned how he barely ever had to run a suicide last year because he got a lot of permissions. I had agreed that this was true, and added it’s the reason he made the team this year because he’s such a hard worker. Thinking about it later, I realized that this was the wrong message to send to him. So when we were shooting around tonight before practice I told him that I wanted to change what I said last night. I told him that he made the team not only because he is a hard worker, but also because he is a good basketball player and in fact that Coach Jon had him as one of the top ten players out there. This is a kid that needs to hear that he’s got the basketball skills to keep up with everyone else.
I had announced, while giving them a chance to rest after a suicide that there would be no practice next Wednesday (Halloween). That gives us 1 practice before our first game. I have to admit to being a little nervous about this since our first game is against MP1, a team who we can beat, but who could also beat us. If we’re going to have a winning season, we’ll need to win games like this. Hopefully with David back in full force, and with the addition of our new players we’ll have a winning effort.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
HP Practice 2 and Assorted Notes
HP Practice 2
Practice 2 is now in the books for HP. The practice was OK and it wasn’t because of the players, it was because of me. The players were attentive, listened well, were eager to learn and have fun. And I came to practice prepared with a full practice plan and a clear idea of what I wanted to accomplish. The fun part was mostly accomplished as we played two dribbling games that most of the players seemed to enjoy. No problem with anything I did there.
The problem is that my instruction seemed OK. The ball handling instruction was hardly spectacular but was fine, and since this was the focus of the practice that’s a good thing. However, my defensive instruction, something I value far more in the long run, was not something I was proud of. Basically I feel like this practice was held back from being a good one because I wasn’t on top of my game mentally (I think the 9 AM practices are rough on me even though I get full nights of sleep beforehand). I also feel like my strength as a coach comes in teaching team skills rather than individual fundamentals, so it figures that the practices when I focus on the fundamentals (as it should be at the start of the season) are going to be weaker.
The nice thing is that these players have given me far less problems when it comes to listening than I had last year with the team. Tiring them out at the start of practice with continuous motion no doubt helps (this team isn’t in as good of shape as last year’s team). In fact we’ve been overwhelmingly on the positive in suicides rather than negatives, with only Gavin finishing in the negatives today. So that’s all good.
While I know that I can help kids accomplish the fun of basketball, it’s a reminder that I’ve seen good basketball coaching and while I like my style and methods I don’t always have the skills to be as effective as I’d like.
GL Update
GL’s practices start this Wednesday. I’m really excited. Due to the coaches’ meeting I will only be practicing for an hour rather than an hour and a half. We’re going to have a parents meeting afterwards.
Bad news is that Dante is out. He sliced open his foot walking on glass. All concerned seem to agree that this was a lesson Dante won’t have to learn twice. His stitches are due to come out this week and his doctor said it would then be a week or two before he could do physical activity. Speaking of stitches, Brian also has them but assures me they’ll be out by Wednesday and he’ll be fine to run.
I’m real excited to get started with this team again. I had sent out an information packet and as I was making reminder phone calls when possible I talked to the players and asked if they had any questions. All assured me they didn’t. Good. So when I throw a quiz at them, they’ll be ready. My message is going to be that we’re all going to have to move our games up this year and this will, I hope, set the right tone from the start.
Coaches’ Meeting
Wednesday, besides the first practice for GL, is also the coaches’ meeting. This is our chance to schedule games and boy will I be doing some scheduling. As it stands basically every weekend there is some kind of conflict that will need to be resolved, whether it’s lack of gym space in GL, or my having to be in two different places at the same time for the two teams. It is going to be a long frustrating night. Making things worse is that a lot of GL’s home dates are on dates that the gym is not available. There was this same problem last year, but we had home and home dates so normally it was just a matter of switching these. This year, there are 15 teams in the conference. We play a slate of 16 games which means that we only play 2 teams twice. This means that if we want to keep our home court advantage we might have to schedule on Saturdays, something I’m not sure is possible or have two games on one day, or give up our home court advantage. I figure, realistically, instead of 8 home games we’ll likely end up with 5 or 6 home games. Just another challenge for us to overcome.
Practice 2 is now in the books for HP. The practice was OK and it wasn’t because of the players, it was because of me. The players were attentive, listened well, were eager to learn and have fun. And I came to practice prepared with a full practice plan and a clear idea of what I wanted to accomplish. The fun part was mostly accomplished as we played two dribbling games that most of the players seemed to enjoy. No problem with anything I did there.
The problem is that my instruction seemed OK. The ball handling instruction was hardly spectacular but was fine, and since this was the focus of the practice that’s a good thing. However, my defensive instruction, something I value far more in the long run, was not something I was proud of. Basically I feel like this practice was held back from being a good one because I wasn’t on top of my game mentally (I think the 9 AM practices are rough on me even though I get full nights of sleep beforehand). I also feel like my strength as a coach comes in teaching team skills rather than individual fundamentals, so it figures that the practices when I focus on the fundamentals (as it should be at the start of the season) are going to be weaker.
The nice thing is that these players have given me far less problems when it comes to listening than I had last year with the team. Tiring them out at the start of practice with continuous motion no doubt helps (this team isn’t in as good of shape as last year’s team). In fact we’ve been overwhelmingly on the positive in suicides rather than negatives, with only Gavin finishing in the negatives today. So that’s all good.
While I know that I can help kids accomplish the fun of basketball, it’s a reminder that I’ve seen good basketball coaching and while I like my style and methods I don’t always have the skills to be as effective as I’d like.
GL Update
GL’s practices start this Wednesday. I’m really excited. Due to the coaches’ meeting I will only be practicing for an hour rather than an hour and a half. We’re going to have a parents meeting afterwards.
Bad news is that Dante is out. He sliced open his foot walking on glass. All concerned seem to agree that this was a lesson Dante won’t have to learn twice. His stitches are due to come out this week and his doctor said it would then be a week or two before he could do physical activity. Speaking of stitches, Brian also has them but assures me they’ll be out by Wednesday and he’ll be fine to run.
I’m real excited to get started with this team again. I had sent out an information packet and as I was making reminder phone calls when possible I talked to the players and asked if they had any questions. All assured me they didn’t. Good. So when I throw a quiz at them, they’ll be ready. My message is going to be that we’re all going to have to move our games up this year and this will, I hope, set the right tone from the start.
Coaches’ Meeting
Wednesday, besides the first practice for GL, is also the coaches’ meeting. This is our chance to schedule games and boy will I be doing some scheduling. As it stands basically every weekend there is some kind of conflict that will need to be resolved, whether it’s lack of gym space in GL, or my having to be in two different places at the same time for the two teams. It is going to be a long frustrating night. Making things worse is that a lot of GL’s home dates are on dates that the gym is not available. There was this same problem last year, but we had home and home dates so normally it was just a matter of switching these. This year, there are 15 teams in the conference. We play a slate of 16 games which means that we only play 2 teams twice. This means that if we want to keep our home court advantage we might have to schedule on Saturdays, something I’m not sure is possible or have two games on one day, or give up our home court advantage. I figure, realistically, instead of 8 home games we’ll likely end up with 5 or 6 home games. Just another challenge for us to overcome.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
GL Tryouts Night 3: We Have a Team
Well it was the night to really see who had what. As I started tryouts, promptly at 8:15, all were there except Dante. We immediately kicked off into our 5 on 5 games. First with the fair teams. Andrew showed that he indeed deserved to make the team, as did Cameron. Jon also felt strongly positive about Dante. Tom, by virtue of his have shown up, made the team. Even better is that during one of the second set of games, Tom actually took a shot. He air balled it, but I was just so happy he actually shot the ball, as he’d become loath to do that by the end of last season.
The initial 5 on 5 was nice, but far more instructive were the uneven 5 on 5 teams. The second team made up of Brian, Cameron, Dante, Jack P, and Tom showed that they could run, at least for a bit, with a team of Andrew, David, Justin, Lucas, and Scott. At one point during the game Justin got the ball at the 3 point line, Dante was sticking back giving him space (as he’d been told to do last season by me). Justin decided to take the shot. It was gorgeous and a perfect swoosh. There were murmurs of approval. There was then a great moment (at least from my perspective) when I said, “We don’t settle for that shot after 1 pass”. The murmurs went away.
More interesting was the way Team 3 played. This had 3 players on the very close bubble: Jack M, Jake, and Noah. Noah and Jack M stood out above the others. In fact perhaps the sweetest play of the night was a pass Jack made to Noah cutting through the lane which resulted in Noah making an easy lay-up. Basically those two were competing for the last slot. Each team plays two games, with it being 1st vs 2nd, 3rd vs 4th followed by 2nd vs 4th and 1st vs 3rd.
I then sent them off for a water break and conferred with Jon. He reiterated his support for Cameron and Dante, which I both agreed with. Cameron in particular won me over with his speed on defense. I conferred with people online and with Jon in person and with all of them pushing Dante, and Dante doing much better than Jake, inside (though Jake is likely a better shooter) that suggestion was given and accepted. In the end Jon didn’t seem to have any feel for Jack, but felt that Noah would play well and admitted that he liked the family and that was likely coloring his view. I agreed Noah had a great family. However, by the end of the water break I felt that Jack was the better player and I had made the tough decision in my head.
I gathered everyone around and talked about how now was the time to be supportive of friends who didn’t make the team. How, if you made the team you needed to be committed otherwise you were stealing a place from someone else who could have been a good member of the team. I also reviewed what would happen. I would give them the note card, talk about the strengths and areas they could improve and they could either stay or go at that point.
When this was all said and done, Emily, my boss at the Park District, came into the gym upset with me for having done this. I didn’t back down, and raised the points that everyone found out equally, I told players they could walk outside the gym after they found if they wanted (and explicitly sat by the door, for just this purpose. Overall, I hope I did the right thing by these kids by giving some immediate feedback, but I don’t know. I do know I was respectful to and upbeat about every kid who didn’t make the team. Hopefully that means something, but having to confront ones peers, as they choose to do, couldn’t have been easy. It won’t be an option again for the future, which in some ways is nice, as it takes my unease out of the equation.
Notable Cuts
Kevin – My first cut. He took it really well and set the precedent of staying in the gym. I wished he had gone out and not been able to handle, seemingly, the news so well.
Noah – He could barely hold it together when I told him that he hadn’t made the team. I told him I really did think he had improved tremendously and if he kept working hard and improving that he’d stand a real good chance for next year. I specifically suggested that he play a bunch with his brother so he can play against someone bigger and work on that. I really like Noah, despite my aggravation over his lack of focus at practice. If the final decision had been between Noah and someone who hadn’t been on the team last year, I’d have given the nod to Noah. I really hope he works hard this coming year.
Daniel – This kid did something which surprised me each night at tryouts. He kept hanging on barely and was a surprisingly tough cut. I think in most years he’d have made a GL team. A real nice kid.
Godie – The other player from last year besides Noah to get cut. I think he knew it was coming. Wasn’t a whole lot to it. He’d really have to work hard and improve a bunch just catch up to where players were this year, let alone where they’ll be in a year.
Meet the Team
So while I still feel upset and confused about the cuts, I feel an equal amount of excitement over this year’s team. I think this team is better than HP’s 6B team, and in fact I am going to try and arrange a scrimmage early on just to prove that very point. I think we are, top to bottom, a better team than last year.
Me - Hopefully I’ll be able to be a good enough coach for the talent assembled. My friend Jeff asked me if the key to being a good team was coaching throughout the season or picking the right players at the start. I said I didn’t know. If it’s the latter I think I did a good job. If it’s the former, only time will tell. I will say that I am in a much better place professionally and given my recent success at work, and coaching last year’s basketball and baseball teams I don’t lack for confidence right now. At the same time I worked REALLY hard on preparing for tryouts which I’m pleased about. Confidence and hard work are good things, I would hope, to be in a coach.
Andrew – As I mentioned I started with Kevin, which was done semi randomly, and then went down the list alphabetically telling each player. For some reason, on impulse, when I got to Andrew I asked him what he saw as his strengths and weaknesses. He identified something which I don’t remember and shooting as his strengths. He identified rebounding as a weakness. I think I perhaps did this to get a sense of his personality as he was pretty quiet overall. Anyhow, after I did this and told him he’d made the team (I immediately told all the people who didn’t make it, as I just felt that was right) he let out the biggest sigh of relief. I’ll be interested to see how he fits into the team dynamic but I think I’m going to like him.
Brian – I haven’t really talked much about him, other than that he was a given. He’s a great shooter. His ball handling skills aren’t as great as I would like and he does make passes which get intercepted. The biggest deal is that he had a rough bout of injuries a year ago. Coming into last year’s tryouts he had just gotten a cast off after 4 weeks after breaking his ankle at camp. A week after practices started he broke his other ankle. I don’t think he’d full recovered by March. However, at this years tryouts he was quick, as he was at least years tryouts. Hopefully he’ll stay injury free this season. He is a rather large hot head and can really go off on himself, and others, though more often on himself (or at me because of himself). So there’s that whole side. But he’s also a kid who, if he likes them, will go out of his way for others. I wasn’t surprised he would talk up another player after Night 1, not to tell me how to do my job, but because he was worried that the kid had had a bad tryout. He is just thoughtful, being the only player on the team, for instance, to ask me when my birthday was. On his note card, I had listed two areas for improvement. I told him the first was based completely on last year and that was playing team basketball and that he hadn’t done anything to the contrary during tryouts. Of course that was also true last year which is why I put it on the card anyway. I also talked with him on his tendency to try and play defense in a way that allows him to steal passes, at the risk of leaving his man open. When we did the triangle passing drill on Day 1, I noticed him doing this, just as he had last year. The nice thing about Brian is that I this year I start with a huge amount of built up trust with him. I know on multiple occasions he’s said, when I’m not around, that I’m awesome and his best coach ever. This has, and will, make dealing with him easier than it would have been otherwise.
Cameron – Before I talk about Cameron now, let me post what I said about him last year during tryouts
Well that’s certainly not true any longer. Cameron has tremendous speed. He is, I believe, after Jack P and David our fastest player. Jon pointed out that you can’t teach speed like that and I had to agree. When it was time for Cameron to come up, I told him how glad I was to have seen him on the first day of tryouts cause he was the last player I cut last year. I told him that he’d improved tremendously and congratulations on making the team. My impression is that he’s more of a me first player right now rather than a team player. I am hopeful, and optimistic, that the general team ethos we have will rub off on him.
Dante – First I should say that when I was debating about whether or not to take Dante, I wasn’t fair to him. Of the three areas I was evaluating (athleticism, basketball skill, and attitude) I focused entirely on his short coming, athletic ability, rather than on his tremendous strength of attitude. I’m real glad several people focused on that and pointed it out to me. I mean the kid practically hugged me when I told him he made the team. I commented to him how his post play had really improved and he said he’d gone to a camp for that. I’ll have to ask him what camp that was since it did him a lot of good as he was a bit of a weak player inside last season and I gave him the Dirk Nowitzki award to recognize the fact that he had a pretty good mid-range shot. I told him that the big thing this season was going to be his speed. I wasn’t worried about it on offense, but was concerned about it on defense. He took this area to work on the best of anyone in that you could tell he genuinely wanted to improve on it. I told him he’d have to work hard to earn his minutes and he seemed excited by the challenge.
David – David should be the best player on the team. David should be the best player on either team in many games. He’s fast, can use either hand to dribble penetrate. Guarding him in practice is always a pain. Best of all he’s not selfish in the least. He, more than me, deserves credit for the unselfish ball we played last year. With his example, my encouragement fell on receptive ears. I will say that this tryout format allowed me to do something that I’m not sure I could have ever done otherwise and that is for me to tell David honestly how much I respect not only his basketball ability but also how he works hard to be better. I had never told him that last year. I had done so in other ways, and I think he knew that I knew how special he was but I felt it was important for me to vocalize it to him. His areas for improvement was that he needed to show more often that he was having fun playing basketball and to not feel the weight of the team on his shoulders. I told him how he knows that I don’t run the offense through one person and that already I could see people who had stepped up after he quit starting to defer to him (Lucas and Scott were both guilty of this) and that it didn’t have to be that way, so he could relax and just do his best. Finally, I told him that I was going to ask a lot from his defensively. I said that I was going to have to ask him to guard big guys this year as we have a bunch of people who can guard guards but fewer who can guard inside guys. He nodded his head in understanding. As our talk ended I commented how I was glad he’d come out as I’d heard a rumor that he was trying out for the JCC team and he chuckled in a way that told me that was not a serious consideration. That made me feel good.
Jack M – In the end Jack made the team because he’s short but he knows how to compensate for that as much as possible and he sees the court well. He is also surprisingly good at penetrating going left or right which takes defenders by surprise. I was tough on Jack. I called him over and asked him why he deserved to make the team. He talked about his ball handling and passing. I agreed with both of those areas. I asked him why maybe he wouldn’t make the team. He couldn’t come up with anything. I gave him a moment to think and he still couldn’t come up with anything. So I told him that he was one of the 10 most skilled players out there, but that I was concerned about what things would be like for him this season. How I was concerned that being a gamer the losing would bother him. I told him how he’d really stepped up for us last year when David left the team, but that there is a lot more talent on the team this year and he’d have to earn every minute he played. By this time he was incredibly choked up. I then told him he had made the team. He kind of spit out “I thought I wasn’t going to.” As I’ll talk about when I get to Tom, I didn’t really weigh the three factors equally, but I am glad to know that as a coach, I have enough credibility in Jack’s eye that even though I told him he was one of the 10 most skilled players that I would leave him off the team because of the other factors. I ended with Jack saying that I really had confidence that he’s older and more mature now and so I have confidence that he could handle these issues. I then repeated myself, not for effect, but more out of nervousness. Conciseness would have been better in this situation so it was unfortunate that I didn’t deliver this last point more effectively.
Jack P – It is little known but September 19th besides being International Talk Like a Pirate Day is also “Give Jack a hard time at tryouts” or at least it was in GL. Unlike with Jack M, I told Jack P right off the bat that he’d made the team. I then told him that I’d considered not taking him after Night 2’s tryout. I then explained to him how it was ridiculous for me to even think about that. I told him how his speed and defense were too good to not have on the team, but that he was the lowest percentage shooter last season. And how missed shots drive me nuts. I will be explaining to everyone later how a missed shot is, in my eyes at least, the same as a turnover since we are giving up the ball every time we miss a shot. I told him that this season he was going to either have to improve his shooting percentage or we’d have to find other ways for him to contribute on offense. Jack just shook his head that he understood, but Jack is always a bit of sphinx when I talk seriously with him and so I’m not sure what was going on inside his head. I really wish if I knew it was “Coach is wrong and I’m going to show him” or “Coach is wrong and is an idiot” or “Ok I’ll have to do better” or “I’m awful”. I just don’t know. I do know that Jack was new to GL last school year and he had been a leader in Massachusetts so he’s got some good qualities there, even if he doesn’t yet have a firm place in the social structure here yet.
Justin – Poor Justin was the last kid to go. He actually talked some tonight and I think I’m going to really like him and will be a kid who I’m going to have to shield to some extent from his father. I told him how impressed I was with his shooting ability and that the 3 point shot he did was a beautiful shot. The admiration in my voice was clear. However, I also told him that he could ask people on the team about how I have sat people who have shot beautiful shots like that without working the ball. I also told him that I put on his note card as an area for improvement “It sometimes seems like you’re half a second behind what is happening” but that I wasn’t sure that was true at all. I said that I had detected something in his playing which bothered me but couldn’t place my finger on it yet but that we had a full season to figure it out. I also told him how I was real happy he came out for the team this year as I’d noticed how good he was when we played against him last year. Justin is going to be an incredible tool for us to have on offense. If he, Brian, and David can give us some credibility on the outside, causing other teams to guard us closely there, in particular Justin drawing out the big man, or forcing a team to go to zone, I think we can then use our speed to take advantage of them. The possibilities of Justin excite me.
Lucas – Lucas is a great kid. Where as last season I forced him to play post, he has grown more up than out and I’m not sure he’ll have the bulk to do that this season. I also know that we’re doing a much more sophisticated defense this year and that Lucas is going to struggle with that at first. Not a whole lot to say here as he was an easy pick as he just has a lot of good qualities, but nothing as outstanding (or negative) as some of the others. I had a real hard time, in fact, coming up with an area to work on and ended up putting “Being more of a leader on the floor” as he’s a real quiet kid but one everyone likes. He was, based on his name, the first kid to make the team. I’ll also point out that his father just LOVES me and his mother likes me a lot too. It’s nice having a couple of parents so firmly in your corner.
Scott – Scott told me he played guard a whole bunch at camp over the summer and kind of enjoyed it. I’m sure he did. I’m glad he’s willing to do that. I hope he’s still a scrappy kid as we need kids who can guard big kids. Sadly, like Lucas, he’s grown more up than out, and I don’t know if he’s big enough to play the post anymore. I hope he is though since he’s a tough defender, probably the best on the team after David. The neat thing about Scott right now is that he really doesn’t know just how good he is which makes him so absolutely enjoyable to coach since he’s got so much potential but works so hard.
Tom – Noah was probably a better basketball player during tryouts than Tom. However as I’ve said from the beginning Tom could make the team on attitude alone as long as he showed me SOMETHING. When talking about how I was looking for athleticism, basketball skills, and attitude, I talked extensively about attitude and didn’t really explain athleticism. Yet, when compiling the team I only really considered attitude as a secondary factor. It was ALMOST enough to keep Cameron and Jack off the team but in the end their talent won out. Noah was a mixed picture but overall positive in the attitude category and he didn’t make the team in favor of athleticism and skills. I’d like to think if we didn’t have so much talent I would follow my own dictum better, and in fact advocated that very position to Jon during his 4th grade tryouts for a couple of players. I don’t like it when my rhetoric and actions don’t match up so I will have to really rethink about this in the future, but for now it is simply a disappointment with myself. I think I would be less disappointed with myself if I’d considered this more in the case of Dante. I did think about it in Lucas’s case but he was a nearly automatic player so that doesn’t really count for anything. All that is a long way of saying, I think the world of Tom and he is the only evidence of my not having been completely hallow in what I said. I was quite concerned, as he’s a bit of a perfectionist, that he’d cut himself after he had a poor showing on Day 1. When I talked with Tom, I told him that while his shooting accuracy might not be there he had beautiful form and we’d work on his shooting this season together.
So that’s the team. I really do think they’re more talented than HP’s 6B team and if that’s true we’ve got a real chance of being better than the .500 team I thought we’d be. That said, practices don’t start for a month so in the meantime we’ll be focusing on HP which is meeting weekly.
The initial 5 on 5 was nice, but far more instructive were the uneven 5 on 5 teams. The second team made up of Brian, Cameron, Dante, Jack P, and Tom showed that they could run, at least for a bit, with a team of Andrew, David, Justin, Lucas, and Scott. At one point during the game Justin got the ball at the 3 point line, Dante was sticking back giving him space (as he’d been told to do last season by me). Justin decided to take the shot. It was gorgeous and a perfect swoosh. There were murmurs of approval. There was then a great moment (at least from my perspective) when I said, “We don’t settle for that shot after 1 pass”. The murmurs went away.
More interesting was the way Team 3 played. This had 3 players on the very close bubble: Jack M, Jake, and Noah. Noah and Jack M stood out above the others. In fact perhaps the sweetest play of the night was a pass Jack made to Noah cutting through the lane which resulted in Noah making an easy lay-up. Basically those two were competing for the last slot. Each team plays two games, with it being 1st vs 2nd, 3rd vs 4th followed by 2nd vs 4th and 1st vs 3rd.
I then sent them off for a water break and conferred with Jon. He reiterated his support for Cameron and Dante, which I both agreed with. Cameron in particular won me over with his speed on defense. I conferred with people online and with Jon in person and with all of them pushing Dante, and Dante doing much better than Jake, inside (though Jake is likely a better shooter) that suggestion was given and accepted. In the end Jon didn’t seem to have any feel for Jack, but felt that Noah would play well and admitted that he liked the family and that was likely coloring his view. I agreed Noah had a great family. However, by the end of the water break I felt that Jack was the better player and I had made the tough decision in my head.
I gathered everyone around and talked about how now was the time to be supportive of friends who didn’t make the team. How, if you made the team you needed to be committed otherwise you were stealing a place from someone else who could have been a good member of the team. I also reviewed what would happen. I would give them the note card, talk about the strengths and areas they could improve and they could either stay or go at that point.
When this was all said and done, Emily, my boss at the Park District, came into the gym upset with me for having done this. I didn’t back down, and raised the points that everyone found out equally, I told players they could walk outside the gym after they found if they wanted (and explicitly sat by the door, for just this purpose. Overall, I hope I did the right thing by these kids by giving some immediate feedback, but I don’t know. I do know I was respectful to and upbeat about every kid who didn’t make the team. Hopefully that means something, but having to confront ones peers, as they choose to do, couldn’t have been easy. It won’t be an option again for the future, which in some ways is nice, as it takes my unease out of the equation.
Notable Cuts
Kevin – My first cut. He took it really well and set the precedent of staying in the gym. I wished he had gone out and not been able to handle, seemingly, the news so well.
Noah – He could barely hold it together when I told him that he hadn’t made the team. I told him I really did think he had improved tremendously and if he kept working hard and improving that he’d stand a real good chance for next year. I specifically suggested that he play a bunch with his brother so he can play against someone bigger and work on that. I really like Noah, despite my aggravation over his lack of focus at practice. If the final decision had been between Noah and someone who hadn’t been on the team last year, I’d have given the nod to Noah. I really hope he works hard this coming year.
Daniel – This kid did something which surprised me each night at tryouts. He kept hanging on barely and was a surprisingly tough cut. I think in most years he’d have made a GL team. A real nice kid.
Godie – The other player from last year besides Noah to get cut. I think he knew it was coming. Wasn’t a whole lot to it. He’d really have to work hard and improve a bunch just catch up to where players were this year, let alone where they’ll be in a year.
Meet the Team
So while I still feel upset and confused about the cuts, I feel an equal amount of excitement over this year’s team. I think this team is better than HP’s 6B team, and in fact I am going to try and arrange a scrimmage early on just to prove that very point. I think we are, top to bottom, a better team than last year.
Me - Hopefully I’ll be able to be a good enough coach for the talent assembled. My friend Jeff asked me if the key to being a good team was coaching throughout the season or picking the right players at the start. I said I didn’t know. If it’s the latter I think I did a good job. If it’s the former, only time will tell. I will say that I am in a much better place professionally and given my recent success at work, and coaching last year’s basketball and baseball teams I don’t lack for confidence right now. At the same time I worked REALLY hard on preparing for tryouts which I’m pleased about. Confidence and hard work are good things, I would hope, to be in a coach.
Andrew – As I mentioned I started with Kevin, which was done semi randomly, and then went down the list alphabetically telling each player. For some reason, on impulse, when I got to Andrew I asked him what he saw as his strengths and weaknesses. He identified something which I don’t remember and shooting as his strengths. He identified rebounding as a weakness. I think I perhaps did this to get a sense of his personality as he was pretty quiet overall. Anyhow, after I did this and told him he’d made the team (I immediately told all the people who didn’t make it, as I just felt that was right) he let out the biggest sigh of relief. I’ll be interested to see how he fits into the team dynamic but I think I’m going to like him.
Brian – I haven’t really talked much about him, other than that he was a given. He’s a great shooter. His ball handling skills aren’t as great as I would like and he does make passes which get intercepted. The biggest deal is that he had a rough bout of injuries a year ago. Coming into last year’s tryouts he had just gotten a cast off after 4 weeks after breaking his ankle at camp. A week after practices started he broke his other ankle. I don’t think he’d full recovered by March. However, at this years tryouts he was quick, as he was at least years tryouts. Hopefully he’ll stay injury free this season. He is a rather large hot head and can really go off on himself, and others, though more often on himself (or at me because of himself). So there’s that whole side. But he’s also a kid who, if he likes them, will go out of his way for others. I wasn’t surprised he would talk up another player after Night 1, not to tell me how to do my job, but because he was worried that the kid had had a bad tryout. He is just thoughtful, being the only player on the team, for instance, to ask me when my birthday was. On his note card, I had listed two areas for improvement. I told him the first was based completely on last year and that was playing team basketball and that he hadn’t done anything to the contrary during tryouts. Of course that was also true last year which is why I put it on the card anyway. I also talked with him on his tendency to try and play defense in a way that allows him to steal passes, at the risk of leaving his man open. When we did the triangle passing drill on Day 1, I noticed him doing this, just as he had last year. The nice thing about Brian is that I this year I start with a huge amount of built up trust with him. I know on multiple occasions he’s said, when I’m not around, that I’m awesome and his best coach ever. This has, and will, make dealing with him easier than it would have been otherwise.
Cameron – Before I talk about Cameron now, let me post what I said about him last year during tryouts
Cameron is a blob. He doesn’t do anything great, but he doesn’t do anything poorly either.
Well that’s certainly not true any longer. Cameron has tremendous speed. He is, I believe, after Jack P and David our fastest player. Jon pointed out that you can’t teach speed like that and I had to agree. When it was time for Cameron to come up, I told him how glad I was to have seen him on the first day of tryouts cause he was the last player I cut last year. I told him that he’d improved tremendously and congratulations on making the team. My impression is that he’s more of a me first player right now rather than a team player. I am hopeful, and optimistic, that the general team ethos we have will rub off on him.
Dante – First I should say that when I was debating about whether or not to take Dante, I wasn’t fair to him. Of the three areas I was evaluating (athleticism, basketball skill, and attitude) I focused entirely on his short coming, athletic ability, rather than on his tremendous strength of attitude. I’m real glad several people focused on that and pointed it out to me. I mean the kid practically hugged me when I told him he made the team. I commented to him how his post play had really improved and he said he’d gone to a camp for that. I’ll have to ask him what camp that was since it did him a lot of good as he was a bit of a weak player inside last season and I gave him the Dirk Nowitzki award to recognize the fact that he had a pretty good mid-range shot. I told him that the big thing this season was going to be his speed. I wasn’t worried about it on offense, but was concerned about it on defense. He took this area to work on the best of anyone in that you could tell he genuinely wanted to improve on it. I told him he’d have to work hard to earn his minutes and he seemed excited by the challenge.
David – David should be the best player on the team. David should be the best player on either team in many games. He’s fast, can use either hand to dribble penetrate. Guarding him in practice is always a pain. Best of all he’s not selfish in the least. He, more than me, deserves credit for the unselfish ball we played last year. With his example, my encouragement fell on receptive ears. I will say that this tryout format allowed me to do something that I’m not sure I could have ever done otherwise and that is for me to tell David honestly how much I respect not only his basketball ability but also how he works hard to be better. I had never told him that last year. I had done so in other ways, and I think he knew that I knew how special he was but I felt it was important for me to vocalize it to him. His areas for improvement was that he needed to show more often that he was having fun playing basketball and to not feel the weight of the team on his shoulders. I told him how he knows that I don’t run the offense through one person and that already I could see people who had stepped up after he quit starting to defer to him (Lucas and Scott were both guilty of this) and that it didn’t have to be that way, so he could relax and just do his best. Finally, I told him that I was going to ask a lot from his defensively. I said that I was going to have to ask him to guard big guys this year as we have a bunch of people who can guard guards but fewer who can guard inside guys. He nodded his head in understanding. As our talk ended I commented how I was glad he’d come out as I’d heard a rumor that he was trying out for the JCC team and he chuckled in a way that told me that was not a serious consideration. That made me feel good.
Jack M – In the end Jack made the team because he’s short but he knows how to compensate for that as much as possible and he sees the court well. He is also surprisingly good at penetrating going left or right which takes defenders by surprise. I was tough on Jack. I called him over and asked him why he deserved to make the team. He talked about his ball handling and passing. I agreed with both of those areas. I asked him why maybe he wouldn’t make the team. He couldn’t come up with anything. I gave him a moment to think and he still couldn’t come up with anything. So I told him that he was one of the 10 most skilled players out there, but that I was concerned about what things would be like for him this season. How I was concerned that being a gamer the losing would bother him. I told him how he’d really stepped up for us last year when David left the team, but that there is a lot more talent on the team this year and he’d have to earn every minute he played. By this time he was incredibly choked up. I then told him he had made the team. He kind of spit out “I thought I wasn’t going to.” As I’ll talk about when I get to Tom, I didn’t really weigh the three factors equally, but I am glad to know that as a coach, I have enough credibility in Jack’s eye that even though I told him he was one of the 10 most skilled players that I would leave him off the team because of the other factors. I ended with Jack saying that I really had confidence that he’s older and more mature now and so I have confidence that he could handle these issues. I then repeated myself, not for effect, but more out of nervousness. Conciseness would have been better in this situation so it was unfortunate that I didn’t deliver this last point more effectively.
Jack P – It is little known but September 19th besides being International Talk Like a Pirate Day is also “Give Jack a hard time at tryouts” or at least it was in GL. Unlike with Jack M, I told Jack P right off the bat that he’d made the team. I then told him that I’d considered not taking him after Night 2’s tryout. I then explained to him how it was ridiculous for me to even think about that. I told him how his speed and defense were too good to not have on the team, but that he was the lowest percentage shooter last season. And how missed shots drive me nuts. I will be explaining to everyone later how a missed shot is, in my eyes at least, the same as a turnover since we are giving up the ball every time we miss a shot. I told him that this season he was going to either have to improve his shooting percentage or we’d have to find other ways for him to contribute on offense. Jack just shook his head that he understood, but Jack is always a bit of sphinx when I talk seriously with him and so I’m not sure what was going on inside his head. I really wish if I knew it was “Coach is wrong and I’m going to show him” or “Coach is wrong and is an idiot” or “Ok I’ll have to do better” or “I’m awful”. I just don’t know. I do know that Jack was new to GL last school year and he had been a leader in Massachusetts so he’s got some good qualities there, even if he doesn’t yet have a firm place in the social structure here yet.
Justin – Poor Justin was the last kid to go. He actually talked some tonight and I think I’m going to really like him and will be a kid who I’m going to have to shield to some extent from his father. I told him how impressed I was with his shooting ability and that the 3 point shot he did was a beautiful shot. The admiration in my voice was clear. However, I also told him that he could ask people on the team about how I have sat people who have shot beautiful shots like that without working the ball. I also told him that I put on his note card as an area for improvement “It sometimes seems like you’re half a second behind what is happening” but that I wasn’t sure that was true at all. I said that I had detected something in his playing which bothered me but couldn’t place my finger on it yet but that we had a full season to figure it out. I also told him how I was real happy he came out for the team this year as I’d noticed how good he was when we played against him last year. Justin is going to be an incredible tool for us to have on offense. If he, Brian, and David can give us some credibility on the outside, causing other teams to guard us closely there, in particular Justin drawing out the big man, or forcing a team to go to zone, I think we can then use our speed to take advantage of them. The possibilities of Justin excite me.
Lucas – Lucas is a great kid. Where as last season I forced him to play post, he has grown more up than out and I’m not sure he’ll have the bulk to do that this season. I also know that we’re doing a much more sophisticated defense this year and that Lucas is going to struggle with that at first. Not a whole lot to say here as he was an easy pick as he just has a lot of good qualities, but nothing as outstanding (or negative) as some of the others. I had a real hard time, in fact, coming up with an area to work on and ended up putting “Being more of a leader on the floor” as he’s a real quiet kid but one everyone likes. He was, based on his name, the first kid to make the team. I’ll also point out that his father just LOVES me and his mother likes me a lot too. It’s nice having a couple of parents so firmly in your corner.
Scott – Scott told me he played guard a whole bunch at camp over the summer and kind of enjoyed it. I’m sure he did. I’m glad he’s willing to do that. I hope he’s still a scrappy kid as we need kids who can guard big kids. Sadly, like Lucas, he’s grown more up than out, and I don’t know if he’s big enough to play the post anymore. I hope he is though since he’s a tough defender, probably the best on the team after David. The neat thing about Scott right now is that he really doesn’t know just how good he is which makes him so absolutely enjoyable to coach since he’s got so much potential but works so hard.
Tom – Noah was probably a better basketball player during tryouts than Tom. However as I’ve said from the beginning Tom could make the team on attitude alone as long as he showed me SOMETHING. When talking about how I was looking for athleticism, basketball skills, and attitude, I talked extensively about attitude and didn’t really explain athleticism. Yet, when compiling the team I only really considered attitude as a secondary factor. It was ALMOST enough to keep Cameron and Jack off the team but in the end their talent won out. Noah was a mixed picture but overall positive in the attitude category and he didn’t make the team in favor of athleticism and skills. I’d like to think if we didn’t have so much talent I would follow my own dictum better, and in fact advocated that very position to Jon during his 4th grade tryouts for a couple of players. I don’t like it when my rhetoric and actions don’t match up so I will have to really rethink about this in the future, but for now it is simply a disappointment with myself. I think I would be less disappointed with myself if I’d considered this more in the case of Dante. I did think about it in Lucas’s case but he was a nearly automatic player so that doesn’t really count for anything. All that is a long way of saying, I think the world of Tom and he is the only evidence of my not having been completely hallow in what I said. I was quite concerned, as he’s a bit of a perfectionist, that he’d cut himself after he had a poor showing on Day 1. When I talked with Tom, I told him that while his shooting accuracy might not be there he had beautiful form and we’d work on his shooting this season together.
So that’s the team. I really do think they’re more talented than HP’s 6B team and if that’s true we’ve got a real chance of being better than the .500 team I thought we’d be. That said, practices don’t start for a month so in the meantime we’ll be focusing on HP which is meeting weekly.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Tourney Report: Championship Game
We had just won a game now a few minutes later we had to be ready to play for the championship. The JCC team had come over and watched at one point. A couple of parents did the same and actively rooted for us. It was clear they wanted their re-match and they were going to have it. As the Karzen game wound down I asked Brian how much time we’d have to warm up. He replied 5 minutes. In reality it was closer to 10, maybe even a bit more.
Since we’d already played two games of basketball, I didn’t bother having us do any sort of special warm-up and instead I just let them shoot. At one point I had to chase away Luke’s brother who had the audacity to shoot around with us. After it became clear we were going to have more than 5 minutes, I let them shoot around for a minute or two more than sat them down. My big focus for this game was on our help defense doing a good job of picking Luke up. We knew we were going to force him to our left, so defenders on that side had to be ready to step in for the double team if he got close to the basket.
JCC got off to a quick start. At that point I believed the game could easily turn into a blow-out. We were tired. I knew that they’d be playing their best ball and they were. Most of their points came-off of a couple plays. One was a clear-out for Luke. Now the good thing about this was that it wasn’t Luke who was scoring. Instead it was either their center scoring a put back, or someone left a little open from our double team making a shot. Still we were tired. After being down by as much as 7, we’d closed the gap to with-in three.
At half time I complemented the team on their great defense. I said we were playing a good game and that we were a second half team and we’d get this game done. We’d beaten this team once and there was no reason we couldn’t beat them again. I did also make a remark that no matter what happened in the game that we should be proud of how’d we played. Where as for the first two parts, and even into the third part, of the first half I really believed that we’d lose, and it could even be a blow-out, by the end of the first half we were playing better basketball.
Right out of half we came out and cut the game to with-in a basket. As the second half played on I was finding it harder and harder to find time to play guys like Tom, Noah, and Gordie. They all got their time in, but it was a hard thing for me to do. During the start of the third part of the second half, Luke went on his only tear of the game. In rapid succession he stole a few balls and created some exciting points to give his team a 5 point lead, after being down by 1 when his tear started. The good news out of this all, was that’s basically his whole contribution, offensively and defensively for the whole game. We had so shut down the inside game that Luke was constantly settling for three point shots. His shooting percentage was better outside the arc this game than the last game, but still nowhere near as good as what he can do inside. We had also made the proper adjustments to their two set plays and so they’d often have to run the play two or three times before they could get a shot off of it. What I was more proud of than how well we were playing him on defense as how we’d neutralized him when HE was on defense. His coaches made it clear that they expected him to stay in his zone, since when he’d wondered we’d made them pay for it.
As Luke went on this run, I was forced to call a time-out to try and stop the momentum. I pointed out that we could make up this score. We had PLENTY of time so we had to play our offense. And during the next five minutes we played some excellent basketball. All half long Scott had done an excellent job of getting rebounds, with 7 second half rebounds. However, he was tired so I put in Jack P as a post player. Jack M decided that maybe he could drive to the basket and he did so, creating all sorts of nice opportunities both in terms of baskets he made, fouls, and creating shots for others, notably Jack P. It was clear that they came out of the time-out with the philosophy that they weren’t going to let David beat them. This was fine for us. Slowly we came back. Dante all year long would shoot 6 or 7 good shots each game and often miss all of them. However, all of a sudden he was getting open in the mid-post and he drained a couple of beautiful shots. The game became a nail biter, but we continued to be down.
Finally with about 25 seconds they went up by 3. I called our final time-out. Basically it was just a “relax out there”. We needed a 3 and everyone knew it. I said that we would tie the game, have momentum and win in over time. I really believed that we’d either lose it in regulation or win it in over time. They had begun earlier in the half wasting time, with Luke bringing the ball just over half court and sitting there. I kept yelling at David that he had to go and guard Luke so they couldn’t keep waste time. However, it was this attitude of that we’d score, while they were just trying to hang-on that gave me such confidence. So we came down on offense and worked it around for a bit, before getting it back to David who pulls up for the jumper and drains it. We’ve tied the game. Our bench explodes. They call a time out with 8 seconds and change on the clock. By this point we were rocking the gym. The atmosphere was unbelievable coming out of the time-out they’d called.
We all knew what they were going to do. They were going to get the ball to Luke and with plenty of time. However, as they went down they were never able to find a good a shot. They ended up launching a bad shot which missed. And we headed into OT.
It really was cliché. Here we had the championship game, with a team that had made a comeback only to make a crucial late shot to tie the game and send it into overtime. That first overtime period was just a bundle of nerves. The period only lasted 2 minutes. I think each team scored 1 basket. We once again had the ball late in the period. There entire focus was so on stepping David that they left Jack M with a good shot, but it missed. We got the ball back and David took and missed a jumper. What upset me was that we all just stood around looking at it, instead of trying for the rebound. The ball actually hit the floor and bounced, meaning that JCC was doing the same thing. Still if we’d done what we should have we might have been able to heave up one last shot. But momentum was on our side. When Jack started to drive in, the coaches were clearly pained. We’d just come out of a time-out and it was clear that the message had been so strong on stop David, that the team left itself open to being beaten by one of our other players.
So now we were in the second overtime. We come out quickly and make a basket and another. They come back and make a basket of their own. On this next possession down they foul Jack M on the ground for a 1 and 1. Jack makes both of the shots and we now have a 4 point lead with about 45 seconds left. Noah asks “Can we storm the court when we win?” I say “Of course” which I don’t think they were expecting. Luke comes down and lofts up a 3, and misses, but gets fouled. Luke’s now at the line for 3 shots. He drains the first two, but misses the 3rd. I don’t know if the play was intentional or not, but they do get the rebound. The put up a shot and miss. Dante comes down with the rebound and is immediately fouled. Another 1 and 1. Dante drains both shots and that’s the game. There is a desperation 3 launched, we get the rebound, and the game is over.
There’s chest bumping and thumping. The team is absolutely stoked. We go through and shake their hands. My opinion of Luke’s father mellowed this game. He was very nice after the game. I think as the game went on he realized that we weren’t some team that had no right competing with his team, but instead was a legitimate competitor. On the other hand, his co-coach was insane and did enough yelling for the two of them. Regardless, I really felt like the better team won this game. At different points we had several players step up when needed, it wasn’t just the David show, like JCC was the Luke show.
There was a real nice ceremony where they were presented with t-shirts for second place and we were presented with our championship t-shirts. We went over to the side, I complemented them on how I often talk about what great teams do, and in this tournament we played like a great team. They posed for a couple of team pictures. It was just great. Here we were champions of an A tourney, having played two games which were as good as basketball games get. What a feeling.
Next time: tournament summary/overview and a recap of Monday’s practice.
Since we’d already played two games of basketball, I didn’t bother having us do any sort of special warm-up and instead I just let them shoot. At one point I had to chase away Luke’s brother who had the audacity to shoot around with us. After it became clear we were going to have more than 5 minutes, I let them shoot around for a minute or two more than sat them down. My big focus for this game was on our help defense doing a good job of picking Luke up. We knew we were going to force him to our left, so defenders on that side had to be ready to step in for the double team if he got close to the basket.
JCC got off to a quick start. At that point I believed the game could easily turn into a blow-out. We were tired. I knew that they’d be playing their best ball and they were. Most of their points came-off of a couple plays. One was a clear-out for Luke. Now the good thing about this was that it wasn’t Luke who was scoring. Instead it was either their center scoring a put back, or someone left a little open from our double team making a shot. Still we were tired. After being down by as much as 7, we’d closed the gap to with-in three.
At half time I complemented the team on their great defense. I said we were playing a good game and that we were a second half team and we’d get this game done. We’d beaten this team once and there was no reason we couldn’t beat them again. I did also make a remark that no matter what happened in the game that we should be proud of how’d we played. Where as for the first two parts, and even into the third part, of the first half I really believed that we’d lose, and it could even be a blow-out, by the end of the first half we were playing better basketball.
Right out of half we came out and cut the game to with-in a basket. As the second half played on I was finding it harder and harder to find time to play guys like Tom, Noah, and Gordie. They all got their time in, but it was a hard thing for me to do. During the start of the third part of the second half, Luke went on his only tear of the game. In rapid succession he stole a few balls and created some exciting points to give his team a 5 point lead, after being down by 1 when his tear started. The good news out of this all, was that’s basically his whole contribution, offensively and defensively for the whole game. We had so shut down the inside game that Luke was constantly settling for three point shots. His shooting percentage was better outside the arc this game than the last game, but still nowhere near as good as what he can do inside. We had also made the proper adjustments to their two set plays and so they’d often have to run the play two or three times before they could get a shot off of it. What I was more proud of than how well we were playing him on defense as how we’d neutralized him when HE was on defense. His coaches made it clear that they expected him to stay in his zone, since when he’d wondered we’d made them pay for it.
As Luke went on this run, I was forced to call a time-out to try and stop the momentum. I pointed out that we could make up this score. We had PLENTY of time so we had to play our offense. And during the next five minutes we played some excellent basketball. All half long Scott had done an excellent job of getting rebounds, with 7 second half rebounds. However, he was tired so I put in Jack P as a post player. Jack M decided that maybe he could drive to the basket and he did so, creating all sorts of nice opportunities both in terms of baskets he made, fouls, and creating shots for others, notably Jack P. It was clear that they came out of the time-out with the philosophy that they weren’t going to let David beat them. This was fine for us. Slowly we came back. Dante all year long would shoot 6 or 7 good shots each game and often miss all of them. However, all of a sudden he was getting open in the mid-post and he drained a couple of beautiful shots. The game became a nail biter, but we continued to be down.
Finally with about 25 seconds they went up by 3. I called our final time-out. Basically it was just a “relax out there”. We needed a 3 and everyone knew it. I said that we would tie the game, have momentum and win in over time. I really believed that we’d either lose it in regulation or win it in over time. They had begun earlier in the half wasting time, with Luke bringing the ball just over half court and sitting there. I kept yelling at David that he had to go and guard Luke so they couldn’t keep waste time. However, it was this attitude of that we’d score, while they were just trying to hang-on that gave me such confidence. So we came down on offense and worked it around for a bit, before getting it back to David who pulls up for the jumper and drains it. We’ve tied the game. Our bench explodes. They call a time out with 8 seconds and change on the clock. By this point we were rocking the gym. The atmosphere was unbelievable coming out of the time-out they’d called.
We all knew what they were going to do. They were going to get the ball to Luke and with plenty of time. However, as they went down they were never able to find a good a shot. They ended up launching a bad shot which missed. And we headed into OT.
It really was cliché. Here we had the championship game, with a team that had made a comeback only to make a crucial late shot to tie the game and send it into overtime. That first overtime period was just a bundle of nerves. The period only lasted 2 minutes. I think each team scored 1 basket. We once again had the ball late in the period. There entire focus was so on stepping David that they left Jack M with a good shot, but it missed. We got the ball back and David took and missed a jumper. What upset me was that we all just stood around looking at it, instead of trying for the rebound. The ball actually hit the floor and bounced, meaning that JCC was doing the same thing. Still if we’d done what we should have we might have been able to heave up one last shot. But momentum was on our side. When Jack started to drive in, the coaches were clearly pained. We’d just come out of a time-out and it was clear that the message had been so strong on stop David, that the team left itself open to being beaten by one of our other players.
So now we were in the second overtime. We come out quickly and make a basket and another. They come back and make a basket of their own. On this next possession down they foul Jack M on the ground for a 1 and 1. Jack makes both of the shots and we now have a 4 point lead with about 45 seconds left. Noah asks “Can we storm the court when we win?” I say “Of course” which I don’t think they were expecting. Luke comes down and lofts up a 3, and misses, but gets fouled. Luke’s now at the line for 3 shots. He drains the first two, but misses the 3rd. I don’t know if the play was intentional or not, but they do get the rebound. The put up a shot and miss. Dante comes down with the rebound and is immediately fouled. Another 1 and 1. Dante drains both shots and that’s the game. There is a desperation 3 launched, we get the rebound, and the game is over.
There’s chest bumping and thumping. The team is absolutely stoked. We go through and shake their hands. My opinion of Luke’s father mellowed this game. He was very nice after the game. I think as the game went on he realized that we weren’t some team that had no right competing with his team, but instead was a legitimate competitor. On the other hand, his co-coach was insane and did enough yelling for the two of them. Regardless, I really felt like the better team won this game. At different points we had several players step up when needed, it wasn’t just the David show, like JCC was the Luke show.
There was a real nice ceremony where they were presented with t-shirts for second place and we were presented with our championship t-shirts. We went over to the side, I complemented them on how I often talk about what great teams do, and in this tournament we played like a great team. They posed for a couple of team pictures. It was just great. Here we were champions of an A tourney, having played two games which were as good as basketball games get. What a feeling.
Next time: tournament summary/overview and a recap of Monday’s practice.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Reader Izulde writes
Yes Dante will be at Center. But as we're running a motion offense, his being at Center matters more on defense and on set plays, such as inbounds or press breaks (which we didn't get to and is one of my main sources of anxiety) than on our normal offense.
His quickness is fine. We're a pretty quick team overall and I'd say he's in the middle of the pack. He does most things well, which is why I'm pretty high on him overall as a basketball player.
I assume you're thinking of putting Dante at C? His slow foot speed would be minimized there and his endurance an asset, as he'd be able to take the banging on the boards he's likely to get down there, especially against larger teams. His rebounding and inside shot would be most helpful there, too.
Also, I'm just curious. He's slow, but how's his quickness?
Yes Dante will be at Center. But as we're running a motion offense, his being at Center matters more on defense and on set plays, such as inbounds or press breaks (which we didn't get to and is one of my main sources of anxiety) than on our normal offense.
His quickness is fine. We're a pretty quick team overall and I'd say he's in the middle of the pack. He does most things well, which is why I'm pretty high on him overall as a basketball player.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Thursday morning I woke up and made the final cut, Cameron. When I was telling the story to a friend, explaining how I took Gordie he quipped “So your receiving corp in football would be TO and Randy Moss?” Have to admit that stung a little. I did retort that taking Cameron was the equivalent of putting in Kerry Collins in as your QB “nice enough, but do you really want Kerry Collins?”
So basically right now we’re in a month long hiatus. My first practice is scheduled for October 23. With the Monday/Wednesday combination being bad news for Dante, and my own having commitments on Wednesdays I looked for a different day of the week for practices and came up with… Friday. Can’t wait to spend 6-7:30 on Fridays in a gym. Fortunately, after 5 weeks we can switch to Tuesdays for the rest of the season, which runs through the middle of March, making the season about 5 months long all together (and making the 10 weeks of Baseball seem like a sprint).
With the dynasty going on hold, essentially, for a month, though I will post any updates as they might happen, I thought it would be good to try and introduce the players. I’ve talked about many of these players already but let’s look at the Kid Coach's 2005-2006 4th Grade Travel Team.
I’d debated a few different ways of organizing this list. I’ve decided that I’m going to go by offensive position and, with-in position, skill, as I see it now. All players will be expected to learn 2 positions eventually as with only 10 players I need a good deal of flexibility in the players I can put on the court, especially for that game that’ll inevitably happen in February where one kid is sick, another has a twisted ankle, and a third is in Vail for the weekend.
Before I break it down by skill let me explain, roughly, what each of the responsibilities will be for each player in the offensive I am working on finalizing. This obviously could change as I work to break down what I want to run into a level that I know can be well taught to and learned by 4th graders.
1 Spot – Your traditional ball handler. He is going to be the player who’ll normally take the ball up the court. Will have primary responsibility for getting back to prevent fast breaks, but depending on where in the offense we are, this could fall to the 2 or 3 player as well.
2 Spot – Stays primarily on the perimeter, though he will sometimes penetrate. Will often be the first look for the 1 player or else setup the first look (via screen). Has secondary responsibility for getting back to prevent fast breaks.
3 Spot – In many ways the trickiest spot in the offense to play. Has both perimeter and post responsibilities, though because of the talent will be on the perimeter more than the post. Along with the 2 will be the first look for a pass from the 1.
4 Spot – Is primarily involved in post play, though not exclusively. He will come out of the post often either to help screen or in order to clear space for the 3 or 5. Is the least likely to shoot the ball.
5 Spot – Your traditional center. Primarily in the post. Is almost always responsible for rebounding.
You will notice that I've written about perimeter play. This is a tad misleading as while they often do their work there, I do not really want my team shooting, for the most part, beyond 10 feet. This means that we’re using the outside to create space/opportunities to work it inside. I expect to see a lot of zone so we’ll be working on zone busting skills such as quick (and skip) passes. Also important will be the concept of screening to get someone the ball not for someone with the ball.
And without further ado, this time for real, let me present my 2006-2007 4th Grade Travel Basketball Team. An asterisk means that if I fielded a basketball team tomorrow they would be starting.
½
*Noah (primary 2) Obviously positions are still fluid at this point. I have slotted Noah here tentatively because of his skills, but his size might find him in more of a 2/3 role before things are all said and done especially as we have, as expected, a surplus of guards. As mentioned before, I like his penetration skills, which shows his ability to dribble so he could even end up finding himself playing more of a 1. While his shooting form might not be the prettiest, he is accurate. During the scrimmage I said that the next time he drove in he should find a team mate to pass it to and he did exactly that suggesting he is willing to implement instruction. He did a few other things, such as mostly pay attention, that suggest he will be teachable (or in this case coachable).
Jack M (primary 1) First let me say there is a definite chance that I have the Jacks backwards. I think I have it straight, but am not sure. Anyhow, short Jack has a nice dribble and can do it with both hands. He is inconsistent, which is actually a complement at this age, at dribbling with his head up. He’s a pretty scrawny kid. Has an average attention span for a 4th grade boy, which is to say not a whole lot.
Gordie (primary 1) Gordie is a small kid. However, he’s got a good shot and better range than some of the kids taller than him. I’ve discussed him pretty indepth in my last post so not a whole lot to add here. I will just stress that the negatives that I talked about before could really impact his role on this team.
Tom (primary 2) It might seem weird that he is ranked below Gordie, who was the last player to make the team, but of course it wasn’t Gordie’s skills holding him back. I was really hoping Tom would have been be able to play a 3 for us, but he’s not there yet and I’m not sure that trying to make him into a forward, even a soft forward, is the best use of his practice time.
2/3
*Brian (primary 2) Brian is a very solid player all around. Not quite as solid is his personality. On more than one occasion he made a negative comment during tryouts. Something like that I am quite confident of my ability to stomp out. I simply don’t tolerate it. In fact, I will likely be opening our first practice with my saying something to the effect of “I’m the coach and I’m here to help you grow and to help you win. Your job as players are to listen to me and to support your teammates>” Or something like that. Anyhow, Brian is tentatively slotted as a 2/3, as I think we have some better dribblers than him, though he does have a good crossover.
3/4
*Jack P (primary 3) The more I see of him the more he impresses. He did well in our lightening game, I believe, and seems pretty solid all around. I also really liked his attitude which goes well with his, seemingly, easy going nature. I hesitate to comment too much about kid’s personalities as for the most part they’ll be different creatures in a tryout situation, what with the nerves, than during the course of a basketball season.
Scott (primary 3) The least talented of the triplets, though still pretty darn good, he seems like he’ll be well suited to these positions. Not a whole lot to comment here.
4/5
*Dante (primary 5): Again I feel like I’ve talked about him a lot. I will say that I was tempted to inquire about the soccer playing backgrounds of my players and feel particularly pleased to learn that someone I thought highly of is also a competitive soccer player as I feel good soccer players often can easily be turned into good basketball players.
Lucas (primary 5): Poor Lucas seemed somewhat surprised that I saw him as a forward/center. He seems like a real good kid. Here’s another kid who I see a fair amount of potential in and hope to see him really grow as the season progresses.
???
*David I’m not sure where to place him. I wished he had been at the 3rd day of tryouts since I think I’d have gotten a better grasp. And perhaps I am overstating his skills, but then again maybe I’m not. He’s likely going to be our point guard, because of his ball handling skills, but he could end up really at any of the positions 1-4, though realistically 4 is not likely going to be where he’d end up on offense.
I will try and post as I come up with firmer plans for things, but in all likelihood, as mentioned before, the dynasty is on a brief hiatus until practices start in October.
So basically right now we’re in a month long hiatus. My first practice is scheduled for October 23. With the Monday/Wednesday combination being bad news for Dante, and my own having commitments on Wednesdays I looked for a different day of the week for practices and came up with… Friday. Can’t wait to spend 6-7:30 on Fridays in a gym. Fortunately, after 5 weeks we can switch to Tuesdays for the rest of the season, which runs through the middle of March, making the season about 5 months long all together (and making the 10 weeks of Baseball seem like a sprint).
With the dynasty going on hold, essentially, for a month, though I will post any updates as they might happen, I thought it would be good to try and introduce the players. I’ve talked about many of these players already but let’s look at the Kid Coach's 2005-2006 4th Grade Travel Team.
I’d debated a few different ways of organizing this list. I’ve decided that I’m going to go by offensive position and, with-in position, skill, as I see it now. All players will be expected to learn 2 positions eventually as with only 10 players I need a good deal of flexibility in the players I can put on the court, especially for that game that’ll inevitably happen in February where one kid is sick, another has a twisted ankle, and a third is in Vail for the weekend.
Before I break it down by skill let me explain, roughly, what each of the responsibilities will be for each player in the offensive I am working on finalizing. This obviously could change as I work to break down what I want to run into a level that I know can be well taught to and learned by 4th graders.
1 Spot – Your traditional ball handler. He is going to be the player who’ll normally take the ball up the court. Will have primary responsibility for getting back to prevent fast breaks, but depending on where in the offense we are, this could fall to the 2 or 3 player as well.
2 Spot – Stays primarily on the perimeter, though he will sometimes penetrate. Will often be the first look for the 1 player or else setup the first look (via screen). Has secondary responsibility for getting back to prevent fast breaks.
3 Spot – In many ways the trickiest spot in the offense to play. Has both perimeter and post responsibilities, though because of the talent will be on the perimeter more than the post. Along with the 2 will be the first look for a pass from the 1.
4 Spot – Is primarily involved in post play, though not exclusively. He will come out of the post often either to help screen or in order to clear space for the 3 or 5. Is the least likely to shoot the ball.
5 Spot – Your traditional center. Primarily in the post. Is almost always responsible for rebounding.
You will notice that I've written about perimeter play. This is a tad misleading as while they often do their work there, I do not really want my team shooting, for the most part, beyond 10 feet. This means that we’re using the outside to create space/opportunities to work it inside. I expect to see a lot of zone so we’ll be working on zone busting skills such as quick (and skip) passes. Also important will be the concept of screening to get someone the ball not for someone with the ball.
And without further ado, this time for real, let me present my 2006-2007 4th Grade Travel Basketball Team. An asterisk means that if I fielded a basketball team tomorrow they would be starting.
½
*Noah (primary 2) Obviously positions are still fluid at this point. I have slotted Noah here tentatively because of his skills, but his size might find him in more of a 2/3 role before things are all said and done especially as we have, as expected, a surplus of guards. As mentioned before, I like his penetration skills, which shows his ability to dribble so he could even end up finding himself playing more of a 1. While his shooting form might not be the prettiest, he is accurate. During the scrimmage I said that the next time he drove in he should find a team mate to pass it to and he did exactly that suggesting he is willing to implement instruction. He did a few other things, such as mostly pay attention, that suggest he will be teachable (or in this case coachable).
Jack M (primary 1) First let me say there is a definite chance that I have the Jacks backwards. I think I have it straight, but am not sure. Anyhow, short Jack has a nice dribble and can do it with both hands. He is inconsistent, which is actually a complement at this age, at dribbling with his head up. He’s a pretty scrawny kid. Has an average attention span for a 4th grade boy, which is to say not a whole lot.
Gordie (primary 1) Gordie is a small kid. However, he’s got a good shot and better range than some of the kids taller than him. I’ve discussed him pretty indepth in my last post so not a whole lot to add here. I will just stress that the negatives that I talked about before could really impact his role on this team.
Tom (primary 2) It might seem weird that he is ranked below Gordie, who was the last player to make the team, but of course it wasn’t Gordie’s skills holding him back. I was really hoping Tom would have been be able to play a 3 for us, but he’s not there yet and I’m not sure that trying to make him into a forward, even a soft forward, is the best use of his practice time.
2/3
*Brian (primary 2) Brian is a very solid player all around. Not quite as solid is his personality. On more than one occasion he made a negative comment during tryouts. Something like that I am quite confident of my ability to stomp out. I simply don’t tolerate it. In fact, I will likely be opening our first practice with my saying something to the effect of “I’m the coach and I’m here to help you grow and to help you win. Your job as players are to listen to me and to support your teammates>” Or something like that. Anyhow, Brian is tentatively slotted as a 2/3, as I think we have some better dribblers than him, though he does have a good crossover.
3/4
*Jack P (primary 3) The more I see of him the more he impresses. He did well in our lightening game, I believe, and seems pretty solid all around. I also really liked his attitude which goes well with his, seemingly, easy going nature. I hesitate to comment too much about kid’s personalities as for the most part they’ll be different creatures in a tryout situation, what with the nerves, than during the course of a basketball season.
Scott (primary 3) The least talented of the triplets, though still pretty darn good, he seems like he’ll be well suited to these positions. Not a whole lot to comment here.
4/5
*Dante (primary 5): Again I feel like I’ve talked about him a lot. I will say that I was tempted to inquire about the soccer playing backgrounds of my players and feel particularly pleased to learn that someone I thought highly of is also a competitive soccer player as I feel good soccer players often can easily be turned into good basketball players.
Lucas (primary 5): Poor Lucas seemed somewhat surprised that I saw him as a forward/center. He seems like a real good kid. Here’s another kid who I see a fair amount of potential in and hope to see him really grow as the season progresses.
???
*David I’m not sure where to place him. I wished he had been at the 3rd day of tryouts since I think I’d have gotten a better grasp. And perhaps I am overstating his skills, but then again maybe I’m not. He’s likely going to be our point guard, because of his ball handling skills, but he could end up really at any of the positions 1-4, though realistically 4 is not likely going to be where he’d end up on offense.
I will try and post as I come up with firmer plans for things, but in all likelihood, as mentioned before, the dynasty is on a brief hiatus until practices start in October.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Tryouts
I was hoping to get this typed up before I went to tryouts today, but it was not to be. The last two days have been very informative. I really feel like good grasp of most of these kid’s skills. This is certainly a change from the first day. So that part is good. The part that is bad? Right now I have a basketball team of 9 players. I have two players on the cusp and I could end up taking one or both of them and don’t know which it’ll be.
Yesterday we did a few drills. We started with a 3 on 2, 2 on 1 weave drill. Then we went to zig-zag dribbling. They were always to use the hand they were dribbling towards, so left if going left, and right if going right. I was actually very impressed overall with how well many of these kids were able to dribble with both of their hands. However, I decided, upon further reflection, that the width we were doing was too small. We ended up repeating this today first thing so that we could use the full court before the 5th graders arrived. I was able to see a lot more distinctions when we did it tonight.
We also did several passing drills with two man teams doing a slide with chest and overhead passes, along with a jogging bounce pass back and forth. We also did a 45 second, how many 6-9 foot jump shots can you make. We ended with some 3 on 3 games. The 3 on 3 games? Disaster. I learned very little worthwhile. I feel like we did something else, but it is forgotten at this point.
Coming out of day 2 a huge burden was taken off my shoulders. All three of the H triplets were going to make the team. Brian, our friend with the broken ankle, is a fairly good guard. I really don’t like his attitude, but it is not so bad as to be a major problem. Scott seems like he’s going to be a good forward. I still have no clue where I’m going to play David, who was once again the best player on the court. I mean he’s likely the best ball handler we have, but he’s also one of the taller players, on a team that is fairly short. Anyhow, this is the sort of problem that I like to have, and I have a bit to figure things out.
Also showing real promise was Dante. He’s one of the two tallest kids out there, besides Asher (who was the kid who reminded me of me in 4th grade). Dante showed good to very good abilities to dribble, shoot, and rebound. He’s exactly the sort of center I had hoped to have: A threat (as much as any of them are) from the outside and able to handle the ball. Fits into the motion offense I expected to run.
Let me diverge from the tryouts here for a second. I went into tryouts with an open mind. I haven’t really choreographed what I expected the offense or defense to be because I wanted to see their skills first. But, as I knew the community, they were what I expected. Mostly a group of short kids. Their dribbling skills were better than I expected and their shooting about what I thought it would be. Anyhow, my plan is to spread the floor, as even tall 4th graders don’t tend to be huge, and teach them how to move without the ball in order to create inside shots. Most of these kids cannot shoot, really, beyond 12, and for many 10 foot is the outer range of where they should be shooting.
Anyhow, so Dante makes the team. Leaving the gym that night I knew that we had a team of 5:
The Hs, Dante, and Jack P. Jack P is another taller kid with good dribbling and shooting skills. He’s a step below Dante in height, and could see some limited time at Center, but will more likely be seeing time in the 3 and 4 spots.
I went home and entered the numbers for both the objective and subjective drills. Came up with a weighted and un-weighted formula to rank them with. Based on that analysis I got two more players; both surprised me at the time as they had not really made an impression, but based on observations tonight both definitely deserved it. Noah was one of them. A shooting/point guard, even possibly a small forward, he’s got a great first step for a penetrating dribble and is a very accurate lay-up shooter. The other player to make it was Jack M. Interestingly, I had a fairly hard time telling Noah and Jack apart for a bit as they both have about the same skin tone and have the same hair cut. I do think I have it down now, though. Anyhow, Jack did very well defensively and showed good ability to dribble with both hands. He’ll be a point/shooting guard for us.
That gave me 7 players who I knew would make the team. I also had ruled out two. Asher was one of them. He actually turned out to be a great rebounder, but really all the other parts of his game are just terrible. My decision was reaffirmed when I learned before tryouts tonight that he’s actually had extensive basketball training. Hence the reason why he had surprised me by knowing of the “hot shots” drill. For a kid who has had all the background he’s had, his fundamentals are just appalling. I thought he was a kid who might just need a thousand lay-ups so he could not look like an octopus when he shoots. But that likely is wrong. He just doesn’t have it. Oh well. Asher also drove me nuts since he took every opportunity he could to sit down. I asked him if he was tired, and he said no. I let him know that he shouldn’t sit down then. Anyhow Asher was out.
Also out was Matt. Matt was one of only two kids, along with Miles not to attend day 2. Matt was slow and unskilled. No real getting around it. I actually wondered if he’d even show up today. He did and my limited observations only more than confirmed what I thought.
That left 7 kids who I was undecided about:
Miles
Tom
Nick
Cameron
David R
Lucas
Gordie
Tom was a virtual lock to make the team. The real problem was that he was a noticeable step below some other kids at some important skills for both the 1 and 2 positions, which were the spots he seemed most comfortable at. He did have good hustle and a good sense of how to move on the court. Considering the offense I want to run this latter trait was what made him a virtual lock to make the team. In fact were it not for his thoroughly mediocre shooting scores I’d like have already put him on the team.
Nick was nearly put on the cut list, but I decided to leave him off. However, he did not come tonight and as such his performance did not improve, making him an easy cut. He did have fairly good defensive skills, though not substantially better than several other players. This means this postive was more than negated by his terrible offensive skills. He wasn’t a particularly great hustler either. He also sucked his shirts. I know this last thing might seem inconsequential but it was actually a fairly big minus in my book. I want my players to play fearlessly out there. That was one way I made basketball teams, because I was (and am) fearless on the court. I’m not afraid to take a charge or set a hard pick or dive for the loose ball. Anyhow, I want fearless players and a kid who sucks his shirt at age 9 is not a fearless kid..
Then there is Cameron. Cameron is a blob. He doesn’t do anything great, but he doesn’t do anything poorly either. More about Cameron later.
David R was the kid who yesterday I just loved his attitude. I continued to love his attitude. I went into tonight looking for something, anything, to justify putting him on the team.
Lucas, was a kid who I didn’t have much of a sense for. His weighted scores, which gave more weight to the objective things we’d done, were so-so.
Finally there was Gordie. Gordie showed moments of skill. However, I knew heading into the day that he’d be a borderline player, with me not wanting to take him. The reason for this was that he was CONSTANTLY not paying attention or needing me to call him over or asking him not to shoot a basket while some other kid was doing his shooting drill. Before tryouts started today the 5th/6th grade coach asked me about him. I told him that he was borderline leaning towards no. The coach explained that he knew the family well and had coached his brother on a couple of teams, and that the brother had the same personality. Good to know it runs in the family.
Miles had not impressed me during the first night’s tryout. However, he was the kid who I first met who had a good spirit. I thought that perhaps there was more that he was capable of, that I simply hadn’t seen. Before tryouts tonight I met his father. His father has an unbelievable background, having founded the 4th grade travel team, done all sorts of JCC sports, founded, and is currently president of, a small fry team. I really liked the guy. It gave me renewed hope that Miles would have more to show me.
Several players had told me they’d be a minute or two late. So when the opportunity arose with 4 of us there to play a game of knockout, I took it. I won. We then played two more games, with more kids joining in each time, which I also won. I’m sure it’ll be a big relief to you to know that I could beat a bunch of 9 year olds. The players all really enjoyed it though, which was good. I let the kids play a fourth game, which only got about ¾ finished before we started tryouts.
As I mentioned we started with full court zig-zag dribbling. After doing full court once we did to half court and back as the 5th graders were starting to trickle in. Next we played a game of “Man in the Middle”. The kids were about 10 feet apart. Person in the middle. The two people on the outside could throw chest or bounce passes to their partner while the man in the middle tried to intercept. This did not turn out nearly as well I had hoped and I ended up speeding it up, though I did get to see a couple of kids do the sort of passes I wanted to see.
My goal tonight was to focus on 6 kids who I didn’t know about. By the end of man in the middle, and based on seeing him play lightening, I knew that Miles, bless his heart, just didn’t have what it took and neither did David R. I really liked both kids, but a travel basketball team just is not the right place for them right now. In happier news, Lucas had impressed me during knockout and continued to impress me during the first few drills and moved into the likely make it category.
Next we divided into 3 teams of 4, as there were only 12 players there. Besides Nick, the H triplets were not there (which was not unexpected). I tried to put 1 center person (which ended up being Asher, Dante, and Lucas), 1 forward (Jack M, Tom, as if he could play forward his playing time would be greatly increased, and Cameron), and 2 guards. I also tried to roughly balance the teams talent wise. I also told the kids who to match up against, though I did not state what position I’d put them at.
The scrimmage proved to be quite informative, in the confirm what I already know sense. Asher, for instance, not only can’t shoot but LOVES to shoot. To the great annoyance of his team mates. Noah impressed me with his ability to penetrate. Lucas tried to play guard until I told him “if you make the team you will be at forward or center, so play there”. He didn’t like it but gave the position his best, which was nice to see. He did a nice enough job. It became clear that Tom could not play forward. That’s a shame as it greatly reduces his utility since I have enough guards, even if I use the 3 as a semi-guard, as is likely. He did, however, again show his ability to move around without the ball to great effect.
More frustrating was Gordie who proved an ability to shoot quite well and also played better defense than I’d seen previously. The kid is also short, even for this team, something I haven’t mentioned before. His annoying traits were still present, though more restrained tonight. In our later drills he would once again prove quite the adept shooter.
Cameron once again did nothing poorly, but neither nothing outstandingly well. This would be the theme with his running as well, which was our next part.
Using two groups I had them do a variety of drills which required them to run/dribble to half court, and back. Miles actually showed a surprising amount of speed, but his control was poor and his left hand weak, so no loss there. After doing the running, I immediately put them back in their three groups and had them each shoot three free throws. Cameron actually did fairly well here.
Then it was time for “half court suicides”. A suicide, for those who don’t know, is where a player runs from under the basket, to the free throw line, back to under the basket, to half court, back, to the opposite side free throw line, back, and to other the other basket and back. The drill is grueling, but is a staple of basketball training because it is good conditioning and also gives players a chance to work on change of directions, again an important skill. Anyhow, a half court versions are considerably less difficult. Of course they ended up running 4 variations which again was somewhat tiring. They did have a short break in between runs as we had two groups, but the players did tire. Then it was another three free throws. The shooting percentage, not surprisingly, dropped off for the second three. I then gave them a water break.
One important note: Dante clearly was not hustling during this. I got on him and still he did not hustle. Later I would learn there was a reasonable explanation for this.
We next did a drill where there is a player who passes in to someone who posts up. That player is being guarded. I only allowed the poster, as I called him, to take one shot. I also stated that there could be no fade aways. It was interesting seeing who turned inside, and who turned outside. The first 5 kids, meaning nearly half, turned outside, until Miles turned inside and became only the second player to actually make the basket. We ran through this twice.
Finally, we ended by doing left handed lay-ups, dribble from the right side to take a shot from about 12 feet on the left side, right handed lay-ups, and doing the jump shot with dribble from left to right.
I gathered everyone around, thanked them for another great day of try outs and explained how the team would be posted. I was asked what days practices were and I said they were currently scheduled on Mondays and Wednesdays. Dante groaned. Turns out he plays travel soccer year round and those are the days they practice and there was even some overlap in the time. This was bad news, as Dante was making the team no doubt. It means I need to talk to Emily, my Park District contact, about changing that Wednesday practice, as Mondays are the best day of the week for me scheduling wise.
Anyhow, I went home. Immediately, of the six I crossed off Miles, Matt, Nick, and David R. Tom and Lucas made the cut. That leaves me with 9 players and only Cameron and Gordie left to make a decision about. Of the two, Gordie is more talented, no doubt. But the question is: is he coachable? Then there is Cameron. His skills aren’t as present, but I know he’ll work hard. Of course he doesn’t bring anything to the team dynamic and while not being a minus is good, being a nothing, is well, nothing. And Gordie at least will have moments where he’d likely add something good.
I think in the end I’m going to take Gordie and not Cameron, though I could take both if I wanted since 11 is still manageable and gives a little more breathing room for sickness/injury. Of course, if everyone is there it makes for an incredibly awkward number to practice with. So that remains the last decision to make. I will likely make it by the time I wake up tomorrow. And truth be told it’ll likely be Gordie and not Cameron. But time will tell.
Yesterday we did a few drills. We started with a 3 on 2, 2 on 1 weave drill. Then we went to zig-zag dribbling. They were always to use the hand they were dribbling towards, so left if going left, and right if going right. I was actually very impressed overall with how well many of these kids were able to dribble with both of their hands. However, I decided, upon further reflection, that the width we were doing was too small. We ended up repeating this today first thing so that we could use the full court before the 5th graders arrived. I was able to see a lot more distinctions when we did it tonight.
We also did several passing drills with two man teams doing a slide with chest and overhead passes, along with a jogging bounce pass back and forth. We also did a 45 second, how many 6-9 foot jump shots can you make. We ended with some 3 on 3 games. The 3 on 3 games? Disaster. I learned very little worthwhile. I feel like we did something else, but it is forgotten at this point.
Coming out of day 2 a huge burden was taken off my shoulders. All three of the H triplets were going to make the team. Brian, our friend with the broken ankle, is a fairly good guard. I really don’t like his attitude, but it is not so bad as to be a major problem. Scott seems like he’s going to be a good forward. I still have no clue where I’m going to play David, who was once again the best player on the court. I mean he’s likely the best ball handler we have, but he’s also one of the taller players, on a team that is fairly short. Anyhow, this is the sort of problem that I like to have, and I have a bit to figure things out.
Also showing real promise was Dante. He’s one of the two tallest kids out there, besides Asher (who was the kid who reminded me of me in 4th grade). Dante showed good to very good abilities to dribble, shoot, and rebound. He’s exactly the sort of center I had hoped to have: A threat (as much as any of them are) from the outside and able to handle the ball. Fits into the motion offense I expected to run.
Let me diverge from the tryouts here for a second. I went into tryouts with an open mind. I haven’t really choreographed what I expected the offense or defense to be because I wanted to see their skills first. But, as I knew the community, they were what I expected. Mostly a group of short kids. Their dribbling skills were better than I expected and their shooting about what I thought it would be. Anyhow, my plan is to spread the floor, as even tall 4th graders don’t tend to be huge, and teach them how to move without the ball in order to create inside shots. Most of these kids cannot shoot, really, beyond 12, and for many 10 foot is the outer range of where they should be shooting.
Anyhow, so Dante makes the team. Leaving the gym that night I knew that we had a team of 5:
The Hs, Dante, and Jack P. Jack P is another taller kid with good dribbling and shooting skills. He’s a step below Dante in height, and could see some limited time at Center, but will more likely be seeing time in the 3 and 4 spots.
I went home and entered the numbers for both the objective and subjective drills. Came up with a weighted and un-weighted formula to rank them with. Based on that analysis I got two more players; both surprised me at the time as they had not really made an impression, but based on observations tonight both definitely deserved it. Noah was one of them. A shooting/point guard, even possibly a small forward, he’s got a great first step for a penetrating dribble and is a very accurate lay-up shooter. The other player to make it was Jack M. Interestingly, I had a fairly hard time telling Noah and Jack apart for a bit as they both have about the same skin tone and have the same hair cut. I do think I have it down now, though. Anyhow, Jack did very well defensively and showed good ability to dribble with both hands. He’ll be a point/shooting guard for us.
That gave me 7 players who I knew would make the team. I also had ruled out two. Asher was one of them. He actually turned out to be a great rebounder, but really all the other parts of his game are just terrible. My decision was reaffirmed when I learned before tryouts tonight that he’s actually had extensive basketball training. Hence the reason why he had surprised me by knowing of the “hot shots” drill. For a kid who has had all the background he’s had, his fundamentals are just appalling. I thought he was a kid who might just need a thousand lay-ups so he could not look like an octopus when he shoots. But that likely is wrong. He just doesn’t have it. Oh well. Asher also drove me nuts since he took every opportunity he could to sit down. I asked him if he was tired, and he said no. I let him know that he shouldn’t sit down then. Anyhow Asher was out.
Also out was Matt. Matt was one of only two kids, along with Miles not to attend day 2. Matt was slow and unskilled. No real getting around it. I actually wondered if he’d even show up today. He did and my limited observations only more than confirmed what I thought.
That left 7 kids who I was undecided about:
Miles
Tom
Nick
Cameron
David R
Lucas
Gordie
Tom was a virtual lock to make the team. The real problem was that he was a noticeable step below some other kids at some important skills for both the 1 and 2 positions, which were the spots he seemed most comfortable at. He did have good hustle and a good sense of how to move on the court. Considering the offense I want to run this latter trait was what made him a virtual lock to make the team. In fact were it not for his thoroughly mediocre shooting scores I’d like have already put him on the team.
Nick was nearly put on the cut list, but I decided to leave him off. However, he did not come tonight and as such his performance did not improve, making him an easy cut. He did have fairly good defensive skills, though not substantially better than several other players. This means this postive was more than negated by his terrible offensive skills. He wasn’t a particularly great hustler either. He also sucked his shirts. I know this last thing might seem inconsequential but it was actually a fairly big minus in my book. I want my players to play fearlessly out there. That was one way I made basketball teams, because I was (and am) fearless on the court. I’m not afraid to take a charge or set a hard pick or dive for the loose ball. Anyhow, I want fearless players and a kid who sucks his shirt at age 9 is not a fearless kid..
Then there is Cameron. Cameron is a blob. He doesn’t do anything great, but he doesn’t do anything poorly either. More about Cameron later.
David R was the kid who yesterday I just loved his attitude. I continued to love his attitude. I went into tonight looking for something, anything, to justify putting him on the team.
Lucas, was a kid who I didn’t have much of a sense for. His weighted scores, which gave more weight to the objective things we’d done, were so-so.
Finally there was Gordie. Gordie showed moments of skill. However, I knew heading into the day that he’d be a borderline player, with me not wanting to take him. The reason for this was that he was CONSTANTLY not paying attention or needing me to call him over or asking him not to shoot a basket while some other kid was doing his shooting drill. Before tryouts started today the 5th/6th grade coach asked me about him. I told him that he was borderline leaning towards no. The coach explained that he knew the family well and had coached his brother on a couple of teams, and that the brother had the same personality. Good to know it runs in the family.
Miles had not impressed me during the first night’s tryout. However, he was the kid who I first met who had a good spirit. I thought that perhaps there was more that he was capable of, that I simply hadn’t seen. Before tryouts tonight I met his father. His father has an unbelievable background, having founded the 4th grade travel team, done all sorts of JCC sports, founded, and is currently president of, a small fry team. I really liked the guy. It gave me renewed hope that Miles would have more to show me.
Several players had told me they’d be a minute or two late. So when the opportunity arose with 4 of us there to play a game of knockout, I took it. I won. We then played two more games, with more kids joining in each time, which I also won. I’m sure it’ll be a big relief to you to know that I could beat a bunch of 9 year olds. The players all really enjoyed it though, which was good. I let the kids play a fourth game, which only got about ¾ finished before we started tryouts.
As I mentioned we started with full court zig-zag dribbling. After doing full court once we did to half court and back as the 5th graders were starting to trickle in. Next we played a game of “Man in the Middle”. The kids were about 10 feet apart. Person in the middle. The two people on the outside could throw chest or bounce passes to their partner while the man in the middle tried to intercept. This did not turn out nearly as well I had hoped and I ended up speeding it up, though I did get to see a couple of kids do the sort of passes I wanted to see.
My goal tonight was to focus on 6 kids who I didn’t know about. By the end of man in the middle, and based on seeing him play lightening, I knew that Miles, bless his heart, just didn’t have what it took and neither did David R. I really liked both kids, but a travel basketball team just is not the right place for them right now. In happier news, Lucas had impressed me during knockout and continued to impress me during the first few drills and moved into the likely make it category.
Next we divided into 3 teams of 4, as there were only 12 players there. Besides Nick, the H triplets were not there (which was not unexpected). I tried to put 1 center person (which ended up being Asher, Dante, and Lucas), 1 forward (Jack M, Tom, as if he could play forward his playing time would be greatly increased, and Cameron), and 2 guards. I also tried to roughly balance the teams talent wise. I also told the kids who to match up against, though I did not state what position I’d put them at.
The scrimmage proved to be quite informative, in the confirm what I already know sense. Asher, for instance, not only can’t shoot but LOVES to shoot. To the great annoyance of his team mates. Noah impressed me with his ability to penetrate. Lucas tried to play guard until I told him “if you make the team you will be at forward or center, so play there”. He didn’t like it but gave the position his best, which was nice to see. He did a nice enough job. It became clear that Tom could not play forward. That’s a shame as it greatly reduces his utility since I have enough guards, even if I use the 3 as a semi-guard, as is likely. He did, however, again show his ability to move around without the ball to great effect.
More frustrating was Gordie who proved an ability to shoot quite well and also played better defense than I’d seen previously. The kid is also short, even for this team, something I haven’t mentioned before. His annoying traits were still present, though more restrained tonight. In our later drills he would once again prove quite the adept shooter.
Cameron once again did nothing poorly, but neither nothing outstandingly well. This would be the theme with his running as well, which was our next part.
Using two groups I had them do a variety of drills which required them to run/dribble to half court, and back. Miles actually showed a surprising amount of speed, but his control was poor and his left hand weak, so no loss there. After doing the running, I immediately put them back in their three groups and had them each shoot three free throws. Cameron actually did fairly well here.
Then it was time for “half court suicides”. A suicide, for those who don’t know, is where a player runs from under the basket, to the free throw line, back to under the basket, to half court, back, to the opposite side free throw line, back, and to other the other basket and back. The drill is grueling, but is a staple of basketball training because it is good conditioning and also gives players a chance to work on change of directions, again an important skill. Anyhow, a half court versions are considerably less difficult. Of course they ended up running 4 variations which again was somewhat tiring. They did have a short break in between runs as we had two groups, but the players did tire. Then it was another three free throws. The shooting percentage, not surprisingly, dropped off for the second three. I then gave them a water break.
One important note: Dante clearly was not hustling during this. I got on him and still he did not hustle. Later I would learn there was a reasonable explanation for this.
We next did a drill where there is a player who passes in to someone who posts up. That player is being guarded. I only allowed the poster, as I called him, to take one shot. I also stated that there could be no fade aways. It was interesting seeing who turned inside, and who turned outside. The first 5 kids, meaning nearly half, turned outside, until Miles turned inside and became only the second player to actually make the basket. We ran through this twice.
Finally, we ended by doing left handed lay-ups, dribble from the right side to take a shot from about 12 feet on the left side, right handed lay-ups, and doing the jump shot with dribble from left to right.
I gathered everyone around, thanked them for another great day of try outs and explained how the team would be posted. I was asked what days practices were and I said they were currently scheduled on Mondays and Wednesdays. Dante groaned. Turns out he plays travel soccer year round and those are the days they practice and there was even some overlap in the time. This was bad news, as Dante was making the team no doubt. It means I need to talk to Emily, my Park District contact, about changing that Wednesday practice, as Mondays are the best day of the week for me scheduling wise.
Anyhow, I went home. Immediately, of the six I crossed off Miles, Matt, Nick, and David R. Tom and Lucas made the cut. That leaves me with 9 players and only Cameron and Gordie left to make a decision about. Of the two, Gordie is more talented, no doubt. But the question is: is he coachable? Then there is Cameron. His skills aren’t as present, but I know he’ll work hard. Of course he doesn’t bring anything to the team dynamic and while not being a minus is good, being a nothing, is well, nothing. And Gordie at least will have moments where he’d likely add something good.
I think in the end I’m going to take Gordie and not Cameron, though I could take both if I wanted since 11 is still manageable and gives a little more breathing room for sickness/injury. Of course, if everyone is there it makes for an incredibly awkward number to practice with. So that remains the last decision to make. I will likely make it by the time I wake up tomorrow. And truth be told it’ll likely be Gordie and not Cameron. But time will tell.
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