9-1 with Some Hardware!

If last week was about as anti-climactic as a championship can be, today's game made up for it and some!

This week leading up to our conference championship (and end of the season) looked like this:
Monday - No Practice (Planned, on purpose)
Tuesday - No Practice (Only 5 kids showed up)
Wednesday - Really Poor Practice (Attitude and Effort)
Thursday - No Practice (Rain, rain, rain, puddles)
Friday - No Practice (Planned, on purpose)

So, I really would not say we were as prepared as we possibly could be, but then again I am not sure I could have said that at all this year.

Getting to this game was different than every other game this year in that it was on a Sunday and every kid was responsible for getting themselves to the game. Even though I sent home two letters this past week with date, time, location and directions, I was fielding calls from kids and parents from 7:30 in the morning until, literally, kick-off.

The game was played at our local Lutheran high school so it was equal parts cool and huge. Our opponent was the only team we had lost to this year. (At that game we started with 9 and went down to 8 with an injury, then they scored and then we got back up to 10 players by halftime, but we never could get a serious attack after that.)

The teams were lined up and announced like they do at the World Cup and then the game started. Then 40 seconds later we were down 1-0. It was pretty silly, actually. Our opponent got a decent attack off of the kick-off and their shot on goal was not anything special, it just caused our keeper to dive and then as he caught it he rolled and then lost control of the ball and basically threw it into the goal. Oops.

The rest of the half was some pretty good middle school soccer with both teams getting decent attacks on goal, but both defenses refusing to break. As per usual, our keeper was anywhere and everywhere thwarting several decent chances our opponent had to score.

Also, as per usual we started the game with less than 11 kids. We had 12 kids on our roster this morning, 10 showed up on time, 1 was late because he was riding the city bus to the game and another never showed because she had her mom drop her off at our school and not the Lutheran high school. (This was, interestingly enough, the first game an official took the time to ask me if I knew we only had 10 kids on the field. Probably, because this was our first game with two officials.)

At half time I did not have much to tell the kids other than some spacing and alignment issues. It was obvious that the larger field was having some effect on their stamina. Otherwise, I felt pretty good about our chances, if we could get an early strike. And we did.

Less than 3 minutes into the second half we got a strong attack going down the left side of the field that eventually got crossed and three of our kids ran at the ball bouncing across the front of the goal. Their keeper dived but missed the ball and then one of our forwards got a foot on it and sent it to the back of the net to even the game at 1-1.

The last 16+ minutes of the game were about as exciting as middle school soccer gets. We had a couple serious attacks, they had several. Again, our keeper was amazing. He stole several balls right from the feet of forwards! Both teams were clearly getting tired as the end neared. Our biggest scare came late in the game when one of our fullbacks inadvertently passed it back to our keeper, giving our opponent an indirect kick about 10 yards out. We set up a terrible wall but it was enough to cause him to send his free kick wide right.

When the time ran out, we readied ourselves for two 5 minute overtime halves. In five seasons of coaching middle school soccer, I have never seen a goal scored in overtime. 5 minutes basically allows each team to get one attack going, if you stop that one, you're pretty safe. So, 10 soccer minutes later we were still tied 1-1. Time for penalty kicks. Each team sends out 5 players, whoever gets more goals wins.

We won the coin toss and chose to start in the goal. Their guy set his ball up, backed up and then blasted it right to our keeper- only he hadn't waited for the referee's whistle! No problem though as he set it up, backed up, waited for the whistle and then sent it wide of the goal to the left. Our first guy calmly line his ball up and then buried it in the lower left hand corner of the net, 1-0 us.

Our opponent's next two guys kicked it right to our keeper... as did both of our guys, still 1-0 us. Our opponent then sent out one of their biggest players. He lined it up and sent it over our keeper's outstretched arms and then it hit the top crossbar and bounced down and in, 1-1. Our next guy was our leading goal scorer this year (and only a 6th grader). He has the most soccer experience of anyone on our team and showed it as he easily sent the ball past the keeper to give us the 2-1 lead.

Down to the final shot for both teams. For the PK's they had both teams lined up at midfield and I quickly told our kids if this kick does not score, we win. Their guy lined it up and sent it right to our keeper and off our kids went to mob our keeper!

Our crowd (easily our biggest of the year- which makes sense as it was the first game that everyone had to bring their kids) went nuts (about as nuts as 30 or so people can get)! The field had to be cleared to get the Upper Division teams on for their game, but we moved off to the side for the photos and then the love from the fans. It was great as I got to meet some of the parents for the first time this year. (Imagine their view of me as a coach with only this game to draw from!) It was a blast.

This team was easily the most dysfunctional I have ever coached in any sport, but when it was game time they did what I had taught them to. I liken them to the Allen Iverson of middle school soccer in that they never wanted to practice, but showed up when it was game time. At the beginning of the year- when I couldn't even get the whole team to run two warm-up laps and then spread out for stretching - I joked with our kids about this being the set-up of all Disney sport movies. A bunch of kids who don't really love the sport but just want something to do come out, drive their coach crazy, and almost never finish the season. The only difference was that we did not have a blue chip player transfer in after losing our first few games. Instead, we won all but one and really should have not lost that game.

A very crazy season, indeed. I told our principal that I will always look at the huge trophy we got and just grin about the ride this season has been. At least our kids can grin too, even if/though for other reasons than me.

8-1 with a Championship!?

At the beginning of this season I had set a goal in my head of finishing the season at or around the .500 level. Last year we ended the season 3-6, so I figured a 5-4 season would be a good improvement and would have our program heading the right direction. I have not really been surprised by the drama and difficulties that this season's team has brought, but I have been surprised by our success. Part of that success has come from playing small schools that have small players and this weekend had a lot of these.

This is our second year attending this tournament in Neenah. Last year we won our first game, played great for the first half of the second game (before folding in the second half) and laid the proverbial egg in our third game when the kids were absolutely gassed from playing three games in one day. This year we almost did not get to the tournament as our invitation was lost in the mail due to our school moving, but we got in this past week. The tournament director had to do a little division realignment to fit us in and we ended up in Division 5 (out of 5). Our division (of four teams) included two schools B teams (made up of 5/6th graders).

Our one day tournament, of course, got started off with some more drama. Our roster officially stood at 12 players on Friday. BUT, one was suspended from school Friday and another had Saturday morning detention- leaving us with 10. I attempted to recruit a player's cousin Friday night but he had a football game Saturday morning. Oh well- such has been our season. I arrived at our school at 6:30am to find two 6th graders already waiting for me. One was a defender, the other was a student I realized I had told could come to the tournament as a 'student manager' if he met me at the school at 6:30am. I open the door and he asks what he is going to be doing as a manager. I toss him a jersey and tell him he will be wearing this jersey with my shin guards playing fullback. That makes 11 strong.

Upon arriving at the tournament site, two of my players decided that they did not want to follow my directions earning one a 10 minute game suspension and the other a full game suspension. Our first game was against the first of the two 5/6th grade teams, so putting 9 on the field to start did not really hurt us as much as it limited what we could do- for a few minutes. We scored our first goal before I put one of the two guys with me into the game. Before halftime we would add another goal to take a 2-0 lead into halftime. The second half went just like the first, two goals for us and our keeper only touching the ball once. First game, 4-0 victory.

Our second game, two hours later, was against the other 5/6th grade team in our division. Right before the start of the game I had to bench another player for play fighting. She sat out most of the first half (even took off her cleats and put them away in her bag) before she changed her mind and attitude and got into the game. This team was physically even smaller than the first and it was clear right away that this was going to be a problem. Our players, without playing dirty, were knocking their players to the ground in almost every confrontation involving the ball and two or more players. Their coach was not happy about this and let the referee know it, a lot. But, there was not much the ref could do when most of the time the other players were knocked down because they were smaller.

The game played out eerily similar to our first. We scored two goals in the first half and our keeper touched the ball once. In the second half we scored two more, our keeper never touched the ball and our opponents' coach pulled his team off the field with 3 or so minutes left after another player went down. A very odd ending to say the least. The "good-game" line was easily the oddest I have ever been through as not one kid nor their coach offered a "good game" to anyone of us. Second game, 4-0 victory.

One more victory and we would be the Division 5 champions of the tournament. Our last opponent was not a 5/6th grade team but was a team having a 'rebuilding' year after a successful season last year with numerous 8th graders. Our kids' attitudes had not been helped greatly by all the winning and looking at our last opponents' stature (only 2 'big' kids), they were sure we would roll to a victory. The first half was the first time I thought maybe my kids were getting tired as we played our least inspiring soccer of the season. Yet, our goalie touched the ball only once and the score was 0-0 at half time.

The second half was an entirely different story all together. We scored 2 goals in the first four minutes of the half. Then we scored another 2 goals in the next 10 minutes. Once we get up four goals I change out my forwards and fullbacks. This time I also let my goalie come out and play in the field (He had done a LOT of standing around for the day and I felt he deserved the shot). The first time the ball came to him he dribbled it from our goalie box in and out of defenders up the entire length of the field and scored his first goal of the year! Clearly he had a lot of pent up energy that needed to be let out! Even moving our fullbacks up, pulling one player off the field and pulling other players over to the sideline to talk during the game could not slow us down as we scored 2 more goals to bring the total for the HALF to seven, final score 7-0.

We had scored 15 goals in three game and our goalie only touched the ball half a dozen times. It was probably the most anti-climactic championship I have ever been a part of. We were totally dominating but it was against competition that we should have dominated. To top it off the tournament had no trophy, plaque or medals for its champions- just a congratulatory hand shake from the tournament director. (The players did douse me with their water bottles, though.)

The kids were happy, I was happy for them. In a week our season will end with a rematch of our only loss- which came when we played down 1-3 players against them. Crazy to think that this discombobulated team could finish with two championships to show for our season of success and silliness!

5-1

Thursday's game was a re-play of an earlier game that got rained out- so, of course it was raining again all day. Not enough, though, to schedule a re-re-play. As the day wound down, it became evident, once again, that we would not have a full squad for the game. Having lost one player a week or so, I was able to recruit a former player to come out for the final week. But, we had a player still out with injury, two more in detention and one more who had an issue right at the end of the day that kept him from the game completely. This gave us 8 players, or one less then our last home game.

Our opponent had a full squad but most of their players were very small. Aside from a couple of players who could kick the ball a long way, they looked to be a team we could easily beat- if we had had a full squad. The start of the game was typical, the ball sailing back and forth both directions, neither team really getting anything going. It was clear to any casual observer that our team had less players, but our kids managed to get up and down the field enough to minimize the disadvantage.

Our referee was a friend of a friend who has played soccer his whole life, just never ref'd (before he ref'd our last game). The switch from player to ref is not necessarily an easy one. When I contacted him about helping us out, I told him that all he really had to do was watch off-side and throw-ins and he'd be okay.

With only 8 kids, if someone takes a break we could have serious problems. We faced such a time sometime after the first five minutes as our opponent mounted a semi-attack. They managed a decent pass across the front of the goalie's box to two guys who looked rather off-side. Our keeper charged them but their forward managed to get the ball by him and into the net. I let out an instinctive coach's cry, "Ah, he was off-side." There was a dramatic pause and then the ref (without a whistle) said, "Off-side." I was happy and a little uncomfortable all at the same time and I thought to myself, "He was off-side." and "We better win by more than one."

From that point forward, my rag-tag team did their best to fulfill my quiet wish. As I have said before, I have not figured out a way to get past my players' attitudes this year, but I also know no way to get more effort out of them- they can be amazing at times and this was one of those. With our three man disadvantage we basically sent everyone up when we attacked and everyone back when being attacked. We had three really good opportunities to score, but missed them all. Late in the first half, our best defender broke through their defense and scored his first goal of the season to make it 1-0, which remained the score into halftime.

In the second half we continued our attacks while stifling theirs. After a few minutes we got our another scoring opportunity when one of their fullbacks was called for a handball 10 yards outside of the box. Our previous goal scorer took the kick and launched a beautiful shot into the upper right hand corner of the goal to give us a 2-0 lead. The goal really took the life out of our opponent as we stayed on their side of the field for most of the remainder of the game. When they did get on our side of the field, they never really threatened to score.

With the victory we brought our season and conference record to 5-1. I would find out Friday that that secured our spot in second place in our conference's final standings. I also learned that the year end conference championship game at our local Lutheran varsity football field - which I thought was upper division champ vs. lower division champ, turned out to be upper #1 vs. #2 and lower #1 vs. #2. So, we get another shot at avenging our only loss of the season (played with 8, 9 and 10 players vs. 11). But before that comes our tournament in Neenah.

4-1

On Tuesday, the weather was nasty... and so was the work day. It seemed that any and everything that could go wrong, did. On top of the work day, our game was in East Troy- 45+ minutes away from our school. And it was raining all morning. I called their coach at lunch and learned that they had not gotten the bad rain that we had, so the game was still on.

Next to none of our parents were able to get to school 30 minutes before dismissal to help get us to the game, so we had to borrow a 15 passenger van from a friend of the family of one of our teachers. The only thing he asked was that we pick up the van and put it back when we were finished. Not a big problem, except that the van was a good 20+ minutes from the school- and the guy we were borrowing it from took the wrong keys to work the day of the game. SO, I had to leave school around 1:15 to drive to the exit to his house (30+ minutes from school) to get the keys and then to pick up the van and then get back to school. I took two wrong turns during the process and got back to the school with the van at 3:00. We managed to get the team excused, dressed and into the van with little trouble and were on the road by 3:30ish.

The ride to the game was easy and we were driving towards the sunny skies and out of the rain and clouds. The team we were playing was actually made up of two schools without enough kids to field a team and had beaten one of our opponents by a far greater score than we had. That made me a little apprehensive about our odds.

When we arrived at the field the first thing I noticed was that the goals were really small. (It ended up that our goalie was as tall as the goals and had about 2 feet to either side after his arms were stretched out.) When we got on the field I noticed that the field was also small. It was clearly a U12 or U10 field, when this happened during past seasons I have coached we ended up playing 8-on-8 because 11-on-11 is really cramped on fields this small. But, alas, we played with full line-ups.

Our opponent had a decent goalie and one player who clearly plays outside of school. (I knew this because his skill level was above pretty much everyone on the field and because he was wearing his club team's jersey which happened to be the same color as his school team's jersey.)

Early on we did a decent job of keeping the ball on their side of the field, but the sheer numbers of kids around the ball at all times gave us little opportunity to shoot, let alone score. Meanwhile, our opponents got a decent attack going down our weakside of defense, got a sweet cross pass that our keeper put two hands on but lost it behind his head and a forward was there to poke it in to take the 1-0 lead. The rest of the half was congested soccer with no further shots for either team.

In our first two wins this year (and only loss) we fell behind 1-0, so it was a familiar place for us to be. I was a bit concerned about our chances due to the field issues, with a field this size (plus the strong winds going on), almost anything could happen.

We got our first goal a couple minutes into the second half when one of our girls playing forward finally got one of her toe-poke shots to slip past the keeper into the back of the net to tie the game at 1-1. A few minutes later, our leading goal scorer had a sweet shot that curved past the keeper to give us a 2-1 lead. From that point to the end, their best player was doing all he could to put shots on the goal from further and further out- having apparently lost all faith in his teammates to score. Our defenders had indentified his being their only real scoring threat and did enough to not give him any good looks. We had a couple more scoring opportunities, but nothing serious and held on to win 2-1.

After passing through the "good game" line, I learned from their coach that their only other loss was to the same team we lost to. This was frustrating for me, since it now looks like that team will win the conference championship (and our conference's spot in the Lutheran conferences championship next week) having defeated us 1-0 when we were playing down 1-3 players against them. I really, really wish I had told their coach our situation and asked them to play even up with us.

This team has really been a struggle this year for me. As I told them on Tuesday, I cannot complain about their effort- it is clear they are giving me all they have got. But our attitudes our keeping us from being even better than we are. They remind me of one of the sons in Jesus' parable about the father who asked his sons to go work in the field. The first said, "Okay" but never went. The second said, "N0", but then went and did the work. My team this year is the second son. Oh well, one more game and then our tournament to go.

3-1

So far this year we have been somewhat fortunate that the craziness that is our soccer team has not overwhelmed us enough to bring about a loss on the field. On Thursday, our madness finally caught up with us.

We have had 13 players are on our roster this year. One was pulled by her parents this week, two were in detention Thursday until 5, and one more (our leading scorer) had a family obligation- leaving us with 9 players to start our game Thursday. (One of the detention players planned to make it to the game by half time.

Our opponent looked to be the best we had faced all year- which is to say that they had a couple players with strong legs and decent dribbling abilities. For the first 10 minutes of the game, we were able to withstand their attacks - despite their 2 man advantage - but could not get a serious attack of our own going. Then one of our fullbacks went down with an injury that he felt he could not play through- that left us with 8 vs. 11. Not much after that, our opponent snuck a ball past our goalie - playing an incredible game up to that point to take the lead 1-0, which is how the first half ended.

At half-time I convinced our injured fullback to just play the entire second half in the half circle that sits at the top of the large goalie box. (It's about 10 feet wide and three feet long.) He agreed that he could do that and off he went. A couple minutes into the half, we got back our best defended bringing us up to 10 v. 11. From there it was a ba-ttle. We did a decent job of answering their attacks with a couple of our own- only their attacks ended with great shots and ours lacked the shot part. Our goalie was playing out of his mind! (Or as they say in Canada during hockey games, "Standing on his head!" - I think I have that right.) It was easily the best middle school goal keeping I have ever seen- we should have found ourselves down 5-0 at the least, but we were still right in it at 1-0.

With around 5 minutes left we finally got our chance as our second leading scorer broke through the defense and was all alone with the opposing keeper... only he tried too hard to set up his shot and ended up nubbing it right to him. Frustrating! We never managed another shot and lost for the first time this season 1-0.

I was extremely proud of our kids for playing 10-9-and 8 on 11 and almost sending it into OT. (If we had gone to PK's again I KNOW we would have pulled it out!) For all the frustration that this team has given me this year, they really played their hearts out. Friday morning I was kicking myself for not approaching the opposing coach before the game to tell him our situation and seeing if he would mind playing equal line-ups, oh well.

Two games and a tournament to go- all next week. Let's hope we can keep 11 kids eligible and get them all to the remaining games!

3-0

At the start of the season we had two games on the schedule for this past week, but one team's school never opened this year and the other game got rained out. We also lost a practice on Monday due to weather, so we had not actually played a lot of soccer since our last win. I was not really sure what to expect tonight other than difficulties and we had a few of those.

Two of our players (including our best defender) were ineligible for tonight's game and a third player was literally pulled from the team right after school when mom received a not-so-great phone call from school today. That left us with 10 players for the game. SO, nine piled in a parent's car, and my van and my wife's van (driven by my cousin who's our nanny for three days while Kate is gone). Our last player hopped in his dad's truck and left before we did, BUT we got to the game before he did.

We started the game - and played most of the first half - 11 v. 9, but you would not have known we were down 2 players the way we controlled the ball for the first 20 minutes. The downside to our crazy schedule/conference this year is that we have to drive 25+ minutes for games like this. The upside is that driving 25+ minutes pits us against some of the smaller schools with less kids (and smaller kids). Our opponent tonight could easily have passed for a U12 or U10 (without their goalie).

The field was also unlike any I have ever seen in that it had a mound right outside of the goalie box on one end that actually created a cliff with a gradual incline of a good foot or two. It made for some interesting attacks in the first half when we were going towards it. Playing down 2 players limited our offensive efficiency but we did manage to knock one through to take a 1-0 lead for the first time this year.

Right before halftime our 10th player (and one of our two leading goal scorers) showed up. At half time it was still 1-0. Our late arriving forward wasted no time in the second half making up for his absence, scoring twice in the first five minutes to push our lead to 3-0. From there I shuffled our line up a little to give some of our fullbacks an opportunity to get some shots on goal. One of our girls scored her first goal ever (and also our first goal scored this year not by our two forwards). A few other players got a LOT of good looks but missed every shot they took. I tallied somewhere near 20 shots that we put on goal.

Defensively, I gave our keeper 7 saves for the sevn balls that rolled up to his waiting arms. Not much excitement for him and our defenders, but otherwise a good moral booster for our team. Actually, a few kids are starting to get a tad bit cocky now that we are 3-0. I have tried to remind them that we have three conference games left in the next 9 days (against three schools larger than our previous opponents) and that we have not won anything yet, but there's not much you can do when you are dealing with pre-teen egos. For now though, we are enjoying the longest win streak in our school's two year history of having soccer.

2-0

This afternoon/evening was one of those games that make me wonder why I coach middle school soccer and then later reminded me why.

If you are going to coach middle school soccer in the city, you have to understand that half the battle is getting the team to the game- and tonight was a battle. During the winter our Lutheran "Super Conference" has four divisions divided by school sizes and locations. With soccer there are only two divisions, which is nice because we are in the "small" schools division- but the small schools are all from the suburbs. Tonight's game was in Brookfield, a 30 minute drive.

Of the 12 players present and eligible for tonight's game, only 4 had rides planned- one had a doctor's appointment and was to meet us at the game. Not necessarily a problem because my van can hold 6 and my wife's van 2. BUT, one player's dad thought he was supposed to pick his son up at the time the game actually started, so he ended up climbing in my van and making it a bit tight for the ride there. Not much traffic, but a lot of stoplights and stop signs- which is enough to drive me crazy driving a van full of middle schoolers wondering if we're going to be late or not.

When we arrived we had time for about 5 minutes of warm-ups, but our kids do not understand our simple two-pass-shot warm-up routine yet and our keeper put his keeper jersey on backwards and the three kids getting rides to the game were missing. 2 managed to show up and we started the game 10-on-10. (Our conference plays 20 minute halves which is really silly- I am used to 30 minute halves and 25 minutes for tournament games, when you are playing more than one game in a day.)

The first 10 minutes were full of "bee-hive" soccer. (My mom and dad coined this phrase when I played grade school soccer because it was easy to find the ball- it was surrounded by several kids moving like a bunch of bees.) A few minutes later our opponents scored the first goal on a pretty decent shot from far out that slipped over the outstretched arms of our keeper who has a particularly long wing span. We had a couple legit attacks, but could not get anything serious going and thus trailed 1-0 at half time. We switched keepers at half time to the keeper that started our last game partly because that was my plan at the start of the season and partly because he was pretty bummed about giving up the goal. This turned out to be my best coaching decision of the night.

In the second half both teams traded decent attacks with our few shots ending up off target and their few shots ending up being stopped in great and not-so-great ways by our keeper. Almost 10 minutes in though we finally broke through and our 6th grade forward scored his second goal of the season to even it up at 1-1.

The final 10 minutes were a classic middle school stalemate. A lot of tired kids kicking the ball everywhere and nowhere all at once. The game ended in a tie and the home coach opted for one 5 minute overtime (as opposed to two). Those five minutes did nothing as neither team could get even a shot off. So we needed penalty kicks (PK's) to decide the victor.

I was excited because I had prepped our keeper to understand that on penalty kicks in regulation the keeper must stay on the goal line, but in shoot out PK's the keeper can come off the line and charge the shot. So I selected our 5 shooters and sent our keeper off ready to charge the first two kicks and fake on the third. Then the referee told my keeper he cannot come off the line. That stunk, but we had a shoot-out to win.

They shot and scored their first PK and so did we. They missed their second... and so did we. They made their third, we missed our third. They missed their fourth... and so did we. Their fifth kick bounced off the top post, off our keeper's head and out. Our fifth kicker was/is probably our most even keeled kid- never gets emotional, ever. He calmly approached the ball and put it deep in the lower corner of the net to tie the PK's at 2 and send us to a second round of 3 PK's.

These 3 had to be 3 new players so now we were down to three kids who have never played soccer before. It seemed that our opponent was in the same predicament. We now shot first and hooked it left... so did they. Our second shooter (a left footer) hooked it right, they shot it over the cross bar. Our third kicker- my biggest attitudinal issue thus far this season - came through with a shot the fooled the keeper. As our keeper headed out I told our team to make sure they piled on him after he won the game for us. Turned out he did not need to be all that ready as their third player missed the goal entirely- but our kids still piled on him to celebrate our second victory in as many games this season.

The good news about winning two out of two so far is that I have been able to challenge the kids to imagine how much better we could be if we: didn't complain about laps, fight with Coach over drills, started listening to the coaching Coach does in practice. I think the kids feel good about themselves (as rightfully they should) and I would like to think they might be coming around to understanding why Coach does what he does in practice.

1-0

On the way to tonight's game, one of my players commented that last night's practice was a "perfect practice"! This was a very telling remark since yesterday all we did was scrimmage so that I could take one more chance to teach positioning and responsibilities to our players.

We had 12 eligible players (permission slip/waiver and athletic fee paid and parent meeting attended), which worked out great because our opponent (who started the year with 10 players) had only 8 in school today due to illness.

Playing 8-on-8 was a little screwy as it erases three players from the line-up and essentially did away with mid-fielders for us. Even though I had to do a lot of "reminding" about where to be and what to do, our kids seemed to have a decent idea of what they were doing.

Our "home" field is regulation size and we bought corner flags and official nets marking the first game we have ever played with a fully equipped field! It looked great. A couple stats that I would love to track - but never could since there is only me to keep stats - are time of possession of each team and time spent on each half of the field. I am sure if I could have tracked those stats we would have dominated in time of possession and time spent on our opponent's side of the field.

With 8 players we opted for a 4-1-2 formation (4 fullbacks, 1 sweeper and 2 forwards). Of course this formation morphed (at times early in the game) into a 2-1-4 (4 forwards) and I had to "remind" our center fullbacks they were not forwards.

The first moment of excitement came about half way through the first half when their forwards mounted the first of maybe only 4 attacks in the whole game. Our fullbacks met them outside of the goalie box, got tuned around somehow and passed the ball back towards our keeper. We were on the east side of the field (staring into the sun) and I thought I saw the other team kick it and told our keeper to pick it up. Oops- can't do that. So they got an indirect penalty kick just inside the goalie box. Our fullbacks actually did a good job of setting up our wall (we only talked about this once, just yesterday) but their player hit a remarkably good shot that went over our wall and just under the crossbar. Kind of a bummer but not enough to dampen our spirits- too much.

We got the equalizing goal within a few minutes on an all-out attack by our forwards, sweeper and 1 or 2 fullbacks. Halftime 1-1.

In the second half we switched keepers to see how our other keeper would do... and never got to see him even touch the ball. In fact, our two fullbacks we were keeping back to defend barely moved at all and we subbed two rotations through those positions with NO action. About midway through the second half we broke through their defense, got a good shot on goal that their keeper got to but did not wrap up. Instead the ball shot straight up, came down off his back and into the goal to give us the 2-1 lead.

The rest of the game we kept the ball on their end of the field. I think the ball only crossed the midfield line 2 or 3 times the entire half. Our kids were pretty tired and excited about the win. I believe (or at least hope) that they learned a few things:

1. Coach was right when he told them how tired they would be from all the running and thus, trust him when he asks them to run laps at practice.

2. Coach was pretty much right when he told them where to be to get to the ball and get in on the action.

I only had to deal with one bad attitude all game, otherwise I think everyone realized how much fun they were having and how much we have to learn and to improve on. Practice tomorrow and then another game Thursday, on the road. But for now, we are the first 1-0 soccer team HOPE has ever had!

Week Three

With the holiday Monday, we only had three practices this week which leaves us one practice (next Monday) before our first game. It should be very interesting.

Our three practices brought our total of players-that-have-been-to-at-least-one-practice up to 18 or so now. However, we have only been able to get 10 at the most to any practice. By the end of the week we were spending at least 30 minutes on offense v. defense. (On our fenced in lot this means setting up cones 24 ft apart in front of the chain link fence and hoping no one kicks it over the fence, but at least twice a practice it happens. Behind the fence is a miniature jungle of weeds. More fun!)

I have learned three things from our mini-scrimmages: 1. Everyone wants to play goalie 2. No one wants to be on defense 3. No one knows anything about positioning, spacing, attacking, defending, etc, etc, etc (Except for one sixth grader who continually schooled his teammates and got shots on goal almost at will!)

I really have no idea what we will look like next Tuesday other than our jerseys and field are all set. I ordered corner flags and nets (along with 6 new balls - so I don't have to pump up four of our "ghetto" balls every practice only to find them flat by the end of practice - and new goalie gloves). When the packages arrived I learned that I had ordered only 1 soccer net (who sells single soccer nets?) and that it was fit for an A-frame (who knew there were multiple kinds of soccer goals?).

This afternoon I drove out to an actual goal manufacturer (where I should have started) and bought an official net set along with some velcro to keep the nets up and take them down easily (since we will be playing our "home" games at a city park this year).

I am confident that I know I have two forwards picked out and that I have two 8th graders I plan on playing one half each until one shows he deserves the spot. The rest of the line-up will be up for grabs by the kids who... A) show up and B) show me they want the spot.

This week was a real struggle for me since I spent all day (as a dean of students for K4-2nd and 6th-8th grade students) working with upset kids and then my soccer team (made up of many of the same kids along with kids who have never played soccer or been on a team) is not sure they want to run my drills and function as a team. This season may be my most challenging yet... the adventure takes a new turn next Tuesday..!

We are still in need of a little financial support. Any gift (of any size) you will receive a team picture. Any gift $50+ and you will get a team t-shirt.

Week Two

Monday... Only 7 players showed up today, 2 of which were new. We had a good work out, though. Pretty much all of the students I talked to about not coming told me transportation (or lack thereof) was the reason they missed practice. This is reason #58 for why coaching middle school sports can be frustrating and reason #142 for why coaching middle school sports in the city can be frustrating. (Actually, it would be top 5 in both...)

Right now the tension in practice has been between getting kids excited about soccer and also setting standards for how our team will and won't be run. When a player comes and walks during our warm-up jog and then walks through drills without even attempting the drill I am inclined to ask them to head home and try again tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll be able to encourage/keep enough kids committed to the team to actually have a team.


Tuesday... Got confirmation of the fields we were hoping to rent for our three "home games" this year - also have our refs lined up too. (Last year I actually had to ref two games - in my work clothes and shoes - when the home teams failed to get refs.) Now we need to order nets and corner flags ($$$).

In practice today, I decided (with two weeks to go before our first game) that I should start to see who could be our Goalie. On one end of our field we have an iron fence and on the other we have chain-link. The chain link fence has an empty city block corner with bushes and the iron fence has a main street, so we set up cones in front of the chain link fence (in case balls missed their mark). I gave two 8th graders a shot at goal, mostly because they are our tallest players and have long arms. Neither has ever played Goalie, but both showed some decent ability and used their length well. I'll probably use both guys in every game (one half each) until one of them demonstrates that he is the better choice.

Only seven players made it to practice. We picked up a couple new players but also lost a couple.
Wednesday... Eight players in practice today. Another new player, but also another player gone. Several players have been absent from practice this week because of transportation issues. Very frustrating because there's not much I can do to help with that situation.

During our shooting drills today more kids wanted to try out being Goalie - I think it was because I brought the Goalie gloves to practice. I let one guy (besides the two from yesterday) try it out. Though only a 6th grader, he did pretty well. I probably won't let him play Goalie, since he's our most experienced player and we need him scoring goals, not stopping them.

The number of players is a small concern to me right now. I won't be really worried until this time next week if we are still only getting 7-9 kids (or worse) to practice. We have 5 more practices before our first game and a lot to introduce and learn.

Thursday... Eleven players showed up at practice today- again a mixture of a couple new players and others not showing. I think we have now had 16-17 different players show up at at least one practice. We would be set if they all came at the same time, but it looks like we will be hovering around 11 all year.

Last year we were fortunate enought to have a handful of players that either had minimal soccer experience or were pretty good athletes. This year we have less that fit that category, but where they lack in those areas they make up for it in their desire to learn a new sport.

We don't practice on Fridays and Monday is a holiday so we now have only 4 practices before our first game. Oh boy!

Week One

Day Two... We shifted practice to our new field next to our school. The grass just got planted in early August and although it has grown in 90-ish %, it is not full and vibrant. Our original plan was to keep everyone off it for the fall to give it a chance to grow, but recess for our elementary grades did not go well on the concrete, so they have been using it for a week now. That, plus our run ins with the locals on Monday, lead us to give our field a try. It is nice to have a fenced in yard, but the wear and tear we will inevitably create worries me a little.

We now have 10 players aboard, two 8th graders from last year's squad, and two more 8th graders. We should pick up a few more before the week is over.

Day Three... Picked up one more player to make 11 on the roster.

Day Four... Rain. Picked up one more player. Stayed inside for an hour and watched instructional video.

Starting out much slower this year than last year. There are still a few more kids to hit up about joining the team. We have two weeks left of practice before our first game and we have a lot of ground to cover to be ready for a game. Hopefully, we can build some momentum or excitement next week.

Day One

I tried to start practice last week by inviting our returning core players to a practice to get our main players going- but only one kids showed up, so I postponed practice until today. That way I had three school days to recruit interested kids for the team.

My efforts yielded 6 players (5 plus one girl who had to wait for her brother on the team to get picked up, so I convinced her to come to practice). There are several more kids who played last year and several others interested that did not show up (including the one player to have all her papers and athletic fee in).

The first exciting thing happened on the way to the park- which is only about three blocks north and 2 blocks west of our school. We sort of weaved our way through the neighborhood to the park and as we passed through a rather busy block, several young people were hanging out on a porch looking intently at us. I figured it was because we were walking through the block in cleats and with a huge bag of soccer balls, but as we passed directly in front of their porch I quickly learned it was because they were waiting to bombard us with water balloons! I was pretty proud of our 6 players as they chose not to respond in any way- probably because only a couple of the balloons hit their intended targets. (It was a little like being Luke Skywalker and being shot at by imperial storm troopers.)

Once we got to the park we had a few kids stop and watch our practice, but no one threw anything at us. Our first practice was pretty low key, stretching, learning some basic touch drills and passing and dribbling. Of our six current players I was excited that 2 were 6th graders and 2 were girls. Though we did not get into anything complex today, I was encouraged that our few players caught on to the drills pretty quickly.

The other "exciting" thing that happened to us was on the way back to the school. Walking through the neighborhood again, we took a different route to avoid the water balloon gauntlet, but we passed several young boys playing basketball who felt the need to shout at our girls. We kept on walking (even though our 8th grade girls wanted to go shut them up) and were surprised when these boys ran a block over and attempted to throw rocks at us through some trees. Immediately after throwing the rocks, the boys made like Carmelo Anthony in a fight and ran, ran, ran away.

This sort of underscores a need I have been praying about for a little while - a van or minibus. I knew that our new school's neighborhood was more "active" than our last, but I did not expect the "fireworks" we got today. If we had a 15 passenger van or mini-bus we could ride to practices (and games) without these kind of issues. Since our team will only get bigger and be adding more girls, I am a tad bit concerned with our having to walk to practice. There is at least one route we can take that sort of avoids the neighborhood.

None of the kids today had cleats, but I had 6 pairs collected and they actually all fit the kids. However, we are still in need of more cleats, shin guards and funds to screen print our jerseys (which currently have no team names or numbers on them) and buy some nets and flags for our "home" field.

One day down, several to go and looking forward to seeing what kind of team we will have this year.

GO TIGERS!

Soccer Season...

will begin in...[click here]

LATE State Results

It was three weeks ago, but since we are headed to the Lutheran NATIONAL Grade School tournament, I thought I would finally get around to posting how the State tournament went.

***

Our first round opponent was a Missouri synod school from Wauwatosa who had beaten and been beaten by teams we had beaten this year. I got to see them play live once and felt that their size might push us a little, but our speed should wear them down.

The first quarter we played like a team that had not played a meaningful game in almost three weeks. Despite the nerves and sloppiness we were up 14-7 at the end of the 1Q. Our center picked up 2 fouls before the end of the quarter and sat the entire 2Q and our defense fell apart and our offense went AWOL as we limped into half time tied 19-19.

The third quarter saw our offense pick up the pace but so did our opponent's. As the quarter wound down, our shooting guard - who had missed his first 7 three point attempts - drilled a three to end the quarter and send us into the 4Q leading 32-38. From there we never looked back. It was as if we realized it was late in the game and we needed to get to work. We got 8 points a piece from both our best scorers (who both finished the game with 22pts a piece) and won the 4Q 23-4 on our way to a 54-32 victory.

***

Our second round opponent had played a tight first round game in a raucous environment - both they and their opponent brought huge (by middle school standards) student sections. Though not exceptionally big or fast, they played a good team game. They did not appear to have much for us to be worried about, and the game played out that way as well.

We played on the main court this round at Concordia University. It is a big transition to go from playing on middle school sized gyms (with an occassional high school gym) to playing on a collegiate sized floor. In this case it worked to our advantage.

We jumped out quickly to start the game, both our press and our shooting guard (9 points in the 1Q) were on fire and we lead 15-2 after the first six minutes. The second quarter was nothing like the first for us, however, as we saw a couple of our starters get into foul trouble and nothing go right offensively. We were able to hold them to 5 points and we only scored 2 to bring our lead to 17-7 at half time.

The 3Q we picked back up where we had left off in the first with our shooting guard replicating his 1Q of 9 pts. We won the quarter 16-7 and took a 33-14 lead into the final quarter. We scored the first few buckets to start the quarter and with about 4 minutes to go, their coach cleared his bench so we did likewise. We still won the quarter (9-5) on our way to a 42-19 victory and a spot in the State semi-finals.

***

Our semi-final opponent was a very familiar one. They were from our conference and we had played (and beaten) them in the semi-finals of the last two tournaments we played (and won). Our game would be a test of whether or not you can beat a good team four times in one season.

Of our previous three match-ups with this opponent, the first two were spirited contests and the third it just seemed that they had convinced themselves that they could not beat us. This game started out just like that. We jumped on them early and rolled to a 9-2 lead at the end of the 1Q. They settled down in the 2Q and we slowed down a little and also dealt with some early foul trouble. We lost the 2Q 10-8 but lead 17-12 heading into the break.

The 3Q was eerily similar to the first in that we did a lot right defensively and enough right offensively to win the quarter 9-2 and extend our lead to 26-14 with one quarter to play. Not much happened in the 4Q as it became apparent that our opponents had truly had enough of us. There was no late game rally, no extra fouling to extend the game, no urgency from either team as the clock slowly ticked away and saw us advance to the championship game with a 32-22 victory. Not very inspiring but we got the job done.

***

Our championship game opponent was a team we had played (and beat) very early in the season. Not only had we beat them, but we also had beat everyone else that had beat them. I liked our match-up with them. Even though they had several big guys, their guards were small and young (7th grade). In our first match-up with them they lead the entire first half, but we turned up the pressure in the 2H and ended up winning by four.

We started the game out like many of our games this year, getting both offensive looks that we wanted and defensive stops that we needed. The biggest surprise was our center scoring 6 first quarter points- the most he had scored all season in a first quarter. We lead 10-8 when the quarter ended, it should have been more but our shooting guard missed two free throws after being fouled while shooting as the clock expired. The second quarter was pretty typical for us, we lost a little steam offensively, got a little lazy defensively and saw our two point lead turn into a one point defecit by half-time, 18-17.

Despite the lackluster second quarter, we were in good shape. No one was in serious foul trouble, we just were not playing like we knew we could. The third quarter we had glimpses that we were ready to break out, but we were never able to get rolling like we often did during the season. We put up an 11 point quarter but gave up 13 points and found ourselves trailing 31-28 with one quarter to go.

The final quarter saw us struggle to stay within 6 points almost the entire time. The lead may have grown to 8pts but we never got within less than 4. It became apparent that nerves (or something) were hitting our boys big time as our execution was poorer than it had been in weeks. We had switched out of our zone press and defense to a man-to-man since the size of the floor (college regulation) made it too easy to find open guys and shots. But, our main players were either unwilling or unable to put much pressure on their assigned guys.

We managed to scrap our way to a three point deficit with just over twelve seconds left and our opponent on the line. He missed the first free throw and then the second and we got the rebound ready to call a time-out, but an official called a lane violation on us. Besides that, the clock operator ran a full second off the clock when no time should have expired. Even our opponent's coach agreed that time ran off, but the operator said he did not start the clock so the time stayed as is. Off course the shooter hit the second FT to move their lead to 4 with 11.something left.

We drew up a play for our best all-round player to dribble straight to the hoop and look for a lay-up, if guarded to kick out to our shooting guard for a 3pt try. Instead of flying up the floor with the ball, he inexplicably jogs the ball up the floor, dribbles a couple circles and then takes a poor 3pt attempt. He missed, we got the rebound, scored and called a time-out...but there was only .9 seconds left. We had used almost 11 seconds to score and now we were down by 2 with less than a second left.

We did our best to cover everyone in hopes of some crazy fluke where we could catch the inbound pass and shoot it all in one motion, but it was not to be as they inbounded and won the state championship 40-38.

A frustrating end to a great, great season. Two days later we received word that we had been accepted to the National Lutheran tournament in Valparaiso, Indiana. A chance to somewhat redeem an unfortunate end.

Championship Photos

At our last tournament, there was a photographer in attendance who takes photos for the local (Grafton) sports teams. He took 174 pictures at our game, including our team photo when it was all over.

Check out the photos [here].

27-5 with Another Championship!

Two weeks ago we were recovering from a disappointing and dysfunctional 3rd place finish in our conference tournament. Now our season has become a rare, incredibly rewarding and memorable one as we won our second straight large Lutheran school tournament.

Our semi-final opponent was a team from our conference that we had played already twice this season, most recently last week in the semi-finals of our Wisconsin Synod tournament. In both cases we played sluggish and got into unnecessary foul trouble but found a way to win by 3 and 1. This time around we were ready to show them once and for all that we were the better team. Our only concern was whether or not our 6'2" center would get home (from visiting his sister at college) in time to play our 1pm game. We got our answer at 12:15 when he called me to let me know he and his family were over an hour away from Milwaukee (plus the tournament was another 30 minutes away). In the locker room we talked about how this was a statement game- we needed to make a statement to our opponent that we were the better team by beating them 3 out of 3 tries and we needed to make a statement to ourselves that even without a key player we could all step up and play great basketball.

I told our guys to be ready for a team that would be hungry to finally beat us and who would come at us with something to prove- but it was clear from the earliest moments of this game that our opponent was not going to be that team. Maybe they had already decided that they could not beat us, maybe they had all stayed up too late the night before, or maybe it was something else but they did not come out with any fire against us.

The first quarter was slow and sluggish for both teams but we were on top 8-6 when it ended. The semi-final before us featured the host school vs. a team from Chicago. The officials had turned that game into a foul and FT fest that was so obnoxious that the home fans were even ripping into the refs (by name in many cases!), so we were a little concerned that our game would end up that way as well. Despite many baffling calls (and even more baffling explanations from the officials), we were never really knocked out of our game plan. The school's gym is smaller than official size, especially on the wings where a player with over a size 10 shoe cannot physically attempt a 3-pointer. The "smallness" of the court worked to our advantage with our press. We were the only team at the tournament who used a press in every game, all game long. We won the second quarter 7-4 to extend our lead to 15-10 at the break.

The third quarter was more of the same from the first half. We forced our opponent to play our game and converted our fast break opportunities to take the quarter 12-6 and take a 27-16 lead into the fourth quarter. It was evident by this time that we had this game under control as our opponent's best player had no energy left playing the entire quarter with his jersey untucked and no real confidence against our defense. We actually lost the quarter by 1 point but won the game 37-27. All of our guys were pretty excited to have definitively beat this team a third team to move on to another championship (thus securing our name in future tournament programs again) and to have done this without our center.

I had emailed the tournament director earlier this week to let her know that our center would not be playing Saturday (because of a family trip) but would be back Sunday. I just wanted to cover our bases since it would be obvious to all that he had not been there Saturday. As it turned out our opponent in the championship was the host school and their head coach told me at the start of the tournament that he was aware of our situation. So, even though our opponent's players (and parents) did not know he was coming- their coach did.

Last week's championship was huge for numerous reasons, this time around it was all about cementing a legacy (if there is such a thing in middle school) of greatness. There was no way I could replicate my pre-game speech from the previous week so instead I prepped the guys for a game with a loud crowd totally against them, officiating that would probably go against them all game, and a chance to demonstrate who we really were. The guys were ready to go, our only question was whether or not our center would be ready for a championship game (having not played the previous three).

The environment in the gym was great. Though the gym (built in 1961- the first year of the tournament- and filled to capacity) was probably over 90% for the home team, we had our largest crowd of fans for any of our four games this weekend, complete with a couple grandparents and parents who had yet to see their kids play this year. The first quarter went exactly how we wanted it to, fast paced and intense. Our press and 1-3-1 zone were doing enough to rattle their offensive plans and our shooting guard was "getting off" hitting all three of his 3-point attempts as we rolled to a 17-11 first quarter lead. It was evident that our center was not ready for this intense of a game after a "vacation" and his back-up was also not ready.

The second quarter we had a couple boys pick up their second fouls and found the bench since we were still ahead by 4-6 points the entire quarter. We lost a little bit of steam and had some crucial mental errors (and one bogus three point play against us) in the final minute that lead to a tie score (23-23) at the break. Our half time coaches' discussion was our longest of the season thanks to the host school's cheerleaders performing at half time (thus extending the normal 5 minute intermission to 10 minutes). We noticed that our opponent had figured out our 1-3-1, so we decided to switch to our 2-1-2 and keep the press going. Offensively, we were getting the shots we wanted- we just needed our bigs to "man" up and do their assigned jobs. All 23 of our points had come courtesy of our two leading scorers and it did not appear that they were going to have any trouble getting buckets in the second half, but they were going to need some help for us to win the game.

In the third quarter other guys started to contribute. Despite falling behind early (for the first and only time in the game), we kept our composure and went to work. Our center finally settled down and gave us the defensive effort we were missing (he finished the game with 6 blocks). Our scorers scored but we also got buckets from two other guys as well on our way to a 13-8 quarter victory and a 36-31 lead with 6 minutes to play.

The fourth quarter played out the way a fourth quarter of a championship should with the crowd into it and the players battling on every possession. Ultimately, the game was decided in the final 3 minutes. Our center denied several point blank shot attempts and scored two huge baskets (his only two of the game). We found ourselves up 6 when our shooting guard stole the ball at the top of the key and raced down the foul for a lay-up that would, for all intents and purposes, seal the win. But, instead of going right to the backboard he tried to make a high-light lay-up and missed. Thus, giving our opponent one last gasp to get the game down to two possesions or less. We harassed them enough on the ensuing possession to get a turn over and the ball out of bounds under our opponent's basket. They had only three fouls at this point in the second half and went into a full court press for the first time in the game. Our two best players were able to run off screens by our center, get the in bounds passes and literally dribble out the final minute and a half never even needing to shoot bonus free throws.

There was not much to say to the boys after the game, they were stoked to win another championship, giddy about the big individual medals everyone got, and even more excited that our name would be listed as 2009 CHAMPION for years to come in the program.

In my post game notes that I write down for every game, I was hard pressed to single out crucial errors we made. All the things we did "wrong" could be chalked up to middle school boys playing in an intense championship game. Our boys did everything we asked them to do, everything we had been coaching and training them to do since October. Back then we knew we had the talent to be a good team and we set our sights on these past two weekends as the tournaments we wanted to be ready for and knew we could compete in. Yet, there were never really any moments that we ever believed (at least as a coaching staff) that this group of guys would actually pull it all together they way they have over the past eight games and truly become a great team. But they did it and they earned these two championships and the invitation to play in the Lutheran schools state tournament in three weeks.

It will be a challenge to keep our guys focused for THREE weeks when they have accomplished what they have, but at this point they have earned some space to be goofy kids. But, if we can find a way to let them enjoy their just rewards AND get them re-focused, we are primed to make some noise at State.

25-5

This weekend's tournament is one of our favorites from last year, if not our favorite. We enjoy it for many reasons: it is run by a Missouri Synod Lutheran school (thus we get to see new/different teams), they do little things that make the tournament fun (selling buttons and beads for every school, team signs everywhere), we did really well last year (2nd place, ensuring that our school name will be in their tournament program for years to come), and because the competition gets good.

Our first two games of the tournament featured a scare and a slaughter. Our first opponent was a team we played last year in the second round and won easily, this time around it should have been easier but it did not play out that way. Our 6'2" center was visiting his sister at college for the day so we were forced into our "small" line-up. It should have not matter as we had our press going really well in the smaller gym that hosts the tournament. We used our traps to jump out to a 21-13 1Q lead with our scoring duo putting up 17 points between them in the quarter. In the second quarter, those two guys got all our points as our opponent adjusted to our tempo and barely lost the quarter to us, 14-13, extending our lead to 35-26 at half time.

In the third quarter, our go to guys got their buckets and a couple other guys pitched in on our way to a 20 point quarter. We lead 55-41 with one quarter to play and it looked like I might be coaching my first game ever where my team hit 70. The only problem was our opponent's point guard was having the best game of his life! With a shot that looked like it hurt him to even attempt he lead their crazy comeback in the 4Q. He got a little miracle help from a couple of his teammates as well as they simply could not miss anything that they threw towards the basket. Their point guard finished with 36 ridiculous points which included a buzzer beating 3 pointer at the end of the game- but we were up 4 when he hit it. Thus, we quietly walked away with a 62-61 victory having lost the 4Q 20-7. In the locker room we made sure that the guys understood that they should be glad, but not proud of the win. (BTW- our best player had a triple double, 20 points-13 rebounds-11 assists, which I am pretty sure is the first player I have ever coached who has done that!)

On top of our gross play- I have been battling my first ever sinus cold/flu/infection and this morning's game seemed to be the "pinnacle" of awfulness. On the way home I stopped at Walgreen's and found the strongest drugs they offered, came home, took some and slept for an hour or so and then laid in the tub with the hottest water I could get from my faucet for another 30+ minutes. After eating some soup and resting for another halfish hour, I took my shooting guard and another player to Ponderosa for dinner. Last year, I took our shooting guard to Ponderosa in between games at this same tournament and he responded that night with a 28 point outburst in 3 quarters of play. I was hoping he would do it again.

Well, he brought his "A" game- but it was completely unnecessary as we controlled the game literally from the opening tip. Our press proved too much for our quarter final opponent as we scored the first 12 points on our way to winning the 1Q 18-4. In the 2Q we limited their scoring to two free-throws while we scored 15 to lead 33-6 at half time. We won the 3Q 13-2 to take a 46-8 lead into the 4Q. All the while our bench guys were getting good extended minutes. We only had eight guys at the game, so we always had a couple starters on the floor to help facilitate our bench guys and their scoring. Even with a slowed down game, we managed to win the 4Q 11-7 and rolled to a 57-15 victory.

Our opponent tomorrow is a familiar one as they are from our conference and we have played (and beat) them twice this season. When we met in conference play at their gym, the officiating was a little off (their head coach actually apologized to me after the game for the officials) and we won by 3, in our tournament last week our best player was in major foul trouble and we still managed to win by 1 (the other game this year in which our opponent hit a 3 pointer at the buzzer when we were up by 4 to bring the final score to within one). I really would like to play somebody new, but we know that this team has yet to see us at our best and we are still 2-0 against them. We also know they really want to get us, so it should be a good game. Win or lose our second game Sunday is also going to be a battle- so it is shaping up to be a good test to see if last weekend was really who we are or if we just got hot and put it together for one weekend. We are hoping it is a repeat of a week ago.

23-5 with a CHAMPIONSHIP!

Our quarterfinal match-up this weekend was with the team that beat us last weekend at our conference tournament. We were missing our best all-round player then and lost, this time around it was a completely different story.

With our team at full strength we decided to use a zone to cut down on their best player slashing to the hoop at will and it was an effective change. The 1Q was fast paced and we lead 15-12 going into the 2Q. That was when our shooting guard (and our defense) got going. We won the quarter 22-10 and lead 37-22 at the break. The 3Q we were sluggish, but still lead 42-31 heading into the 4Q. The last six minutes we kept the game out of reach and rolled into the semi-finals with a comfortable 53-40 victory. Our two best players had scored 41 between then (23 from our shooting guard and 18 from our do-all guy).

Our semi-final opponent was from our conference and, during the regular season, was the only team in our conference to lose to us by a single digit margin. In that game the officiating was a little off as was our effort and we squeaked out a 3 point victory. This game ended up being eerily similar.

The first sign that this game was not going to go according to our plans was when our main guy picked up his second foul 1:12 into the game. He would pick up his 3rd (on a very shady call) before the end of the quarter. We would play the entire second quarter without his services and yet we lead 13-8 after the 1Q and 20-14 at halftime. In the 3Q our shooting guard picked up the scoring slack and we did enough right defensively to extend our lead to 27-18 heading into the 4Q. The last six minutes were frustrating and sloppy. Neither of our best scorers made even one basket. We lost the quarter 16-8, but ultimately found ourselves up 4 with 3 seconds left and watched safely as they threw in a three pointer at the buzzer to make the final score 35-34. We were on the championship to face the same team that beat us in the championship of a local holiday tournament earlier this year.

Our earlier game with our championship opponent was a case study in dysfunctional middle school basketball. Our main guy scored 9 1Q points and then failed to score the rest of the game. The fouls and FT's were lopsided favoring our opponent. Our 3/4 court press was sloppy and got abused. Out bigs refused to man up and exploit our huge size advantage. Even with all that went wrong, that game was tied with a minute to go before we lost it. We were confident that if our guys would finally "get it" and play our team's "game" we should and would beat these guys. Our guys did just that and more.

From the opening tip it was clear that our guys were on a mission and that our opponent was not going to match our intensity on this night. They had no player even 5'10" tall. We have a 6'2" center and our main threat is 5'10". But it was not our size that got us going early. Instead, it was our point guard- who averages 2ish points a game but nailed his first 3 shots to get us rolling. During this tournament we modified one of our 3/4 court presses and it was majorly messing with the other team. The only thing they had going was a set shooter who nailed a few shots and at the end of the 1Q we were up 13-11. Defensively we were playing a 2-1-2 zone the whole way, knowing they could not match us physically inside. Our guards on the perimeter and our guys and the wing were harassing their shooters enough to hold them to 9 second quarter points. Meanwhile, on the offensive side we ran every possession through our do-all guy, now playing post. For the first time this season he realized he knew post moves and the smaller defenders were no match for him as he scored 14 of our 15 second quarter points leading us to a 29-20 halftime lead. It might have been unknown to others, but to us it was all but over right then.

In the third quarter our zone defense and our "hot hand" on offense went right back to work and we took the 3Q 15-7 to extend our lead to 44-27 with one quarter to play. The only tense moments came when our opponent threw a sort-of-press on us and got a couple baskets to cut the lead to 10 midway through the 3Q and then when our main guy picked up two quick silly fouls to then have 4 personals.

Even with him out to start the 4Q, our zone defense was too impenetrable for our opponents and our center- who finally was becoming the player we thought he was months ago- asserted his 6'2" self and refused to let them come down low. By the time we got our star back in, the game was out of reach for all intents and purposes. Their coach realized it and we both got our benches in for 90ish seconds. We were up 19 when they threw in a buzzer beating three pointer to bring the final total to 57-41.

Earlier in the day when we were meeting as a coaching staff, we decided that it had to be basketball fate that we would win for the following reasons:
1. We were playing one of my assistant's alma mater at his high school alma mater's gym.
2. 5 years ago (almost to the date), I coached my first championship game while my wife was pregnant with our first child. She is again pregnant with an April due date.

Fictitious fate aside, our boys would not be denied. Everyone of them finally bought into what we have been preaching and teaching to them since October and they became the unstoppable force we thought we were convinced they could become.

As far as Wisconsin Lutheran Synod middle school basketball goes in the entire greater Milwaukee metropolitan area, this tournament is the end-all, be-all prime time show and WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!

20-5 with Some Drama

Our big Lutheran school tournament kicked off last night, but the drama leading up to it started days (actually weeks) ago.

On Tuesday of this week there were murmurs afloat at lunch that our 6'2" center was quitting the team with 2 weeks to go. (He had already informed me that he was planning to go visit his sister at college next weekend instead of playing in our season's final tournament.) At the end of the school day he found me, gave me his team sweatshirt and said he was quitting. When I asked him why, he told me to ask his teammates. When I refused to accept his answer he told me again to ask his teammates. He and I moved our conversation to a smaller room where he stood his ground about wanting to quit. I made my case and we had an impasse. After about 15 minutes of sitting alone in our school's kitchen (by himself, in the dark) he left but then turned around and told me quietly he did not want to quit.

On Wednesday I was out of school to watch our sick kids, so our assistant coaches ran practice. Everybody but our starting point guard and best all-round player had a good practice in my absence. Those two guys decided to treat practice like a day at school with a substitute teacher. When I spoke to them Thursday, they felt that their behavior was no big deal. I decided to not start either of them in our first round game.

When it was time to dress for the game we knew for certain that two guys were not coming and a third was extremely late, leaving us with seven guys- but one did not have his shoes, just his school shoes. That mean we had six guys and I wanted to not start two of them. In the moment I decided to have our two bad attitude guys work out their punishment in the hallway instead of the benching. One guy did and the other did not- in fact he so disliked my "solution" that he went to get his school clothes and change out of his game gear to go home but his teammates stopped him. They did not, however, stop his bad attitude from continuing.

The game was one we could afford to not be at full roster strength as it was a huge mismatch. The only problem - besides the missing shoes and the bad attitude - was that I only had one sub, so I had four guys on the floor at all times that could legitimately score at will. Doing the best that we could to not be jerks, we won 56-13 to set up a rematch Saturday morning with the team we lost to this past weekend at our conference tournament- when we were missing our best all-round player. Hopefully, everyone will show up for the game.

19-5 with some 3rd Place Hardware

This weekend was our conference's tournament. Having finished the regular season 7-0 we were the #1 seed. Using a traditional bracket we drew the #8 seed in our first round game. When we played this team during the regular season we won 56-13 using two five man line-ups that basically split the game time 50-50. This time around my plan was to let our starters start the game and the third quarter, get their points and get minutes for our bench guys. For the first two minutes, it looked like our starters did not even want to be in the gym as we actually trailed 4-0. We settled down and scored the next 40 points though leading 16-4 at the end of the 1Q, 36-4 at halftime, and 51-7 at the end of the 3Q on the way to winning 68-13. Highlights of the game were 1) scoring the most points in a game this season even with a running clock for the entire second half and 2) our least used player (our very own "Rudy") was actually our high scorer with 13 points. He simply could not miss. His made shots included one 3 pointer and a couple head-fakes + one dribble + shot- just like we practice. Everyone on the team and - especially his mother - was pretty jacked for his "coming out" game. It was a good way to start the tournament.

*****

Our semi-final game was against the #4 seed whom we had previously beaten by only 5. In that game, we were up by 22 points in the fourth quarter before sleep walking and holding on at the end to win. The have a couple guys who rebound and run well, but they are driven by their best player who is a stocky 61" and dribbles well and attacks the basket well. Last time we contained him with our best all-round player and our 6'2" center.

The tournament, to this point, had played out anything but normal. In the first round the #6 seed shocked the #3 seed with a 3-pointer at the buzzer to win and then turned around and beat the #2 seed in their semi-final to advance to the championship game. This did not matter much to us since we have beaten them (and the #2 seed) by 20+ in the regular season. If we could handle our business we looked to be able to claim our championship the next day. And then our best all-round player inexplicably did not physically show up for our semi-final game. And he did not call me or anyone else with his whereabouts. And the rest of the team inexplicably could not function in his absence.

Our only problem was with our opponent's best player, who feasted upon our lack of skill defensively and our soft post players on his way to 22 first half points. Offensively, we were getting all the shots we wanted but next to none of them were going in and our bigs could not and would not rebound to save their lives. After the 1Q we were only down 7-3, but by half time we were down 31-15.

Needless to say, we had a lot of work to do and were sorely missing our point guard/forward/center who - along with our shooting guard - make up 27 of the 36 points a game we average. Add to this, our shooting guard had 3 foolish fouls by half time so I had to sit him to start the second half.

We came out determined to stop their star's penetration and shored up our defense with a 2-1-2 zone. Our defensive intensity kicked in (we held our opponent scoreless for the 3Q) and our bigs grabbed some boards but we could still barely score and trailed 31-20 heading into the fourth quarter. In the 4Q we cut the lead down to 7 once, 9 a couple times, but nearly every time we would get the lead to single digits we would blow one (or more) lay-ups and could never get the game down to two possessions. In the end we lost 37-26 and had no one to blame but ourselves. We could have used the 13pts and extra man that our missing player brings, but he could not be blamed for our inability to grab rebounds and our failure to execute defensive principles that we have worked on for over 10 weeks now.

I spoke to my missing player later last night and his story does not match up entirely with the story I got from the team family that usually drives him to the game. Some sort of apology and punishment is clearly warranted, but how severe has to be determined before tomorrow. For this team to build any kind of momentum going into the next two weeks - and the two biggest tournaments of the year - we need to win tomorrow and we need to win big.

*****

As we were getting dressed in our locker room for the 3rd place game, it was understood that none of us wanted to be there- we all wanted to be preparing for the championship, but since that was not our reality we all agreed that we were ready to take out our frustration on our opponent. Our missing player was back but would sit out the first half as punishment for going AWOL last night.

Our opponent had struggled mightily in their semi-final loss with their opponent's full court press. We used our press to run out to an early xx-xx lead. They settled down a little but not enough to make up for the points they lost to turnovers and we lead xx-xx at the end of the 1Q. The second quarter they got their press break going and actually won the quarter 9-7 leaving us ahead xx-xx at half time. The whole quarter was characterized by our mistakes: both our starting bigs picked up their second foul and came to the bench, my starting point guard could not get his attitude together and came to the bench, and our press was leaking. The lone bright spot was our shooting guard who was finding his touch again.

Half time was another of our painfully-too-often "what will it take to get you guys to understand that when we stick to our game, our game plan we are a very good team" talks. Having yet to make a statement with our play and also now having our MIA player back, we were in a good spot to break the game open- which is exactly what we did.

Starting out with our press again we scored a quick 6 with ease. When they did break our press we stopped them quickly and our two best scorers went to work inside and out and we flew to a xx-xx lead at the end of the 3Q. In the 4Q, we dropped out of our press, but now our defense was mostly going and offensively we were still getting any shot we wanted. The final score was xx-xx. We finally did exactly what we wanted and it felt good. The silver lining of the win was that we ended up getting home in time to catch 3/4 of the Super Bowl and our 3rd place trophy was literally only about an inch smaller than the championship trophy.

Hopefully we can carry this momentum into next weekends big Lutheran school tournament.

17-4

This week brought our "regular" season to a close with a non-conference and a conference game on back-to-back nights.

Thursday's game was against my church's school's team. Size wise they are very comparable to us, but talent wise - at least the last two seasons - we are a couple steps ahead of them. When I set the game up I mentioned to their AD that we had a pretty good squad so we would not mind them having 9th graders suit up (since their school goes through 12th grade) and they agreed to do just that. It did not end up mattering too much.

We played 7 minute quarters (one more minute than we are used to, one less minute than high school games) which made the game feel much longer than normal (which made sense since it was 25% longer) and allowed extra minutes for guys to play. One of our starters missed practice the day before so he did not get to start, but our line-up needed only a minute or so to get into our rhythm. Once we got our first basket we were able to use our press to create a series of easy looks- though we missed a LOT of them- and we rolled to an 18-6 lead heading into the 2Q.

The next quarter we lost some steam due to our opponent settling in to the game plus our rotating through a couple line-up changes and continually missing point-blank shots. Even with the extra minutes we managed to stay out of foul trouble and won the 2Q 9-8 to take a 27-14 lead into half time. The third quarter was much of the same as the second, in that we were sluggish and they had a couple good series that allowed them to get a little momentum. The school just opened their gymnasium this year, so there is a lot of excitement about the facility. Thus, they had a good sized crowd on hand and at this point in the game their team started giving them something to get loud about. We did enough right, though, to lead 34-20 heading into the last quarter.

Typically, we jump on teams in the 3Q, but in this game we "decided" to wait until the fourth to do it. Eventually, we wore them down and - although we still missed an obscene amount - made a lot of lay-ups. We won the quarter 17-4 on our way to winning 51-24.

Overall, it was good to get so many minutes on a regulation sized floor. Defensively, we are very good when our press is clicking. Once other teams break it, we still have some work to do. Offensively, we are at our best when we are running and pushing the pace. When teams force us to work through our half court sets, we still do not run our most basic sets with high competence. The next three weekends are our big tournaments, how well we bear down and defend and play "our" game will determine whether or not we win anything of significance.

**********

Saturday night was our last conference game and the only thing standing between us and a perfect conference record and a regular season championship. Our opponent had one really good player and not a whole lot else. This was fortunate as three of our starters were in trouble - 2 of which I benched for the first quarter due to their behavior in one of our assistant's class.

We played the first quarter much like a team with 2 non-starters starting and one more starter starting for the first time this season (maybe ever for him). We were sluggish, slow and disorganized and actually lost the 1Q 9-8. At the start of the second quarter we had our regular starters in, but not much of a rhythm (which was understandable with two starters having to sit much longer than they were used to- kind of like what Rip Hamilton is now going through for the Pistons). Our press produced enough easy baskets to give us the lead 24-18 at half time.

Our biggest concern in the second half was to not allow our opponent to hang around, since teams that can stay within striking distance tend to build momentum believing they can win the game. We did not have our typical outburst in the third quarter but we did what we had to to win the quarter 14-4 and take a 38-22 lead into the fourth. The last quarter was typical for a game out of reach except for a tense 30 seconds when our lead (which had ballooned to almost 20) fell to 11 with our opponents shooting a free throw. I had to put our starters back in for a couple possessions to get the clock under 2 minutes and the lead back to over 15.

The game ended with one of our guards - who does not get a lot of minutes or shots - making a sweet spin move and nailing a jump shot as time expired to the great delight of the bench and his mom. We won the game 50-35 and the regular season conference championship with a 7-0 conference record. The conference tournament is next weekend and we have put ourselves in the best position possible to win that- if we have a good week of disciplined preparation.

15-4

Last night's match-up was between the first place and last place teams in our conference and pretty much played itself out like a first v. last would/should play out. The biggest drama of the night was due to my directions to the game. Our opponent was a team that represented two schools and I Mapquested directions to the school they don't play their games at. With a few phone calls we made it to the correct gym.

We divided our team (of ten guys) into 2 relatively even groups of 5 and played the first three quarters alternating between the two line-ups before finally giving the end of the 3Q and the entire 4Q to our guys who do not usually get a lot of minutes and/or buckets. Every guy on the roster ended up scoring (for the first time this season) as we cruised to a 56-13 victory. We are now one game and victory away (next week) from finishing the conference season undefeated.

14-4

Due to a snowed out game the last day of school before Christmas break, we had back to back nights of conference games and a chance to establish ourselves as the best team in our conference with 2 conf. games left.


Friday night was a game we have been looking forward to for several weeks now. At the end of all of our previous conference games the opposing coaches have all asked me if we had played St. John's yet, since they are the other "team to beat" this year.


Coming off of our poor showing at last weekend's tournament we had a so-so week of practice, but it looked like our guys were getting back into the swing of things and were ready to get back on track. We also had our brand new vegas gold jerseys to break out for this game (which, incidentally, was a good thing because our opponent played in black jerseys - the same color as our other set). We looked sharp walking out for the opening tip and for the first 2 minutes it looked like we might run away with the game as we jumped all over them with our 3/4 press and worked our way to an early 13-4 lead. Like any good team they utilized a time-out, settled down, made some adjustments and started to play better. Add to that our center picking up two early fouls in the quarter and having to sit out, they managed to pull closer as we lead 16-9 at the end of the 1Q.


In the second quarter our shooting guard picked up his second foul and we switched defensively to a 1-3-1 zone that we have been struggling with. They stepped up their defensive pressure and we made some crucial mistakes in the final minute of the quarter and ended up losing the quarter 10-7, but still lead 23-19 at the half.


At half time there was not much to say other than to continually point out that when our guys stick to the game plan and play our team's brand of basketball, with energy on every possession, we are capable of putting many teams away early. But, when we resort to playing within our bad habits and trying to do things we have not practiced and create things that are not there, we allow many teams to stick around.


Usually the 3Q is our quarter to get our act together, but not this time. For the first 4:30 of the quarter we were unable to even score but we managed to stop them as well. With just under 2 minutes to play in the quarter they got a steal and converted the break to take their first lead of the game. We managed to get a couple baskets off of defensive play in the final 90 seconds to take an unstable 27-25 lead into the final quarter.


The last quarter was a fairly exciting quarter as far as middle school basketball goes. The only major concern I had was the officials. This game's referees were easily in the top 5 most frustrating officials I have ever "worked" with. The home team getting less fouls (4 v. 13) and more free throws (11 v. 4) is a natural part of basketball but the calls going against us were - at times - preposterous. Just as frustrating as the calls going against us were the "imaginative" explanations I was getting from the officials as to why the calls were going against us. These moments prove to be some of the more comical of this season with two assistants on our bench. Both are life long basketball guys (as am I), one is a certified referee and the other is the son of a referee. At the very least it is comforting to have two people in close proximity to affirm my "view" of what was happening.


None-the-less, we found ourselves up 3 with under a minute to play and on defense. We had scrapped the 1-3-1 at half time and we playing man-to-man and got a rebound off their miss with 45ish seconds remaining. At this point they only had 2 team fouls and began a half-hearted attempt at pressuring us and fouling. They only got off two fouls as our guards spaced, moved, passed and dribbled 40 seconds off the clock before the defense knocked the ball out of bounds with 4 seconds left. We are up by 3, with the ball, 4 seconds left- a great position to be in. On the in bounds play - after a time out - our guys ran the play we wanted, but their guy defending the pass tipped it and they got possession, a dribble, a pass and a desperation 3 attempt that hit the top of the backboard and we won 33-30.


Not really a statement game, but a win none-the-less leaving our conference record perfect, for the time being. Somehow, we have to find a way to motivate our guys to channel their play from the first 2 minutes for the whole game. If we can do that, we are going to have plenty of opportunities still this season to play great ball and see rewards for our efforts.


**********


Our Saturday night game was against a team that we took 2 out of 3 from last year. Of all the Lutheran school gyms we play in (which are all great), theirs is the best. Besides the full length and width floor, they have spacious sidelines and a lower and upper level seating (not that a middle school games would ever necessitate the upper level, but it's nice to have).

We saw this opponent play at an earlier holiday tournament where they won the consolation championship (while we took 2nd). From seeing them there and during their warm-ups, we were fairly comfortable in thinking we should have won this game.

We came out a little slow and a little sloppy. The gym was loud and our opponent was ready to play. There were a lot of turnovers for both sides in the first quarter, but we did enough right to take an 8-4 into the second quarter.

At this point the pace of the game picked up significantly. In most cases this ends up being to our advantage, but since our opponents' frantic amped up pace caused us to play frantic our guys were making way too many mistakes to capitalize. The quarter was a 10-10 tie leaving us in the lead 18-14.

It appeared that we were stuck in whatever slump we fell in for most of Friday's game. At halftime we had nothing to say that we had not already said for the entire season at halftime breaks. When we play disciplined and within our plan, we are good enough to make plays and control the game. When we do not, games we should easily win become games where the outcome is in doubt until the very end.

There was no magic in the locker room, but something set in as we returned with a more typical third quarter and then some as we rolled 13-0 in the quarter on our way to a 31-14 lead heading into the final quarter. At that point we were able to get some of our less experienced guys some good minutes, shots and baskets as we coasted to a 44-26 victory.

The win put us at 5-0 in our conference with two games left to play, both against opponents in the bottom half of our conference's standings. (I actually got an email from a coach congratulating us on our conference championship, flattering but a tad bit early for me.) I felt way better after Saturday night than I did Friday, knowing that - at least for 12 minutes - we had played the basketball we were capable of playing and had definitively defeated someone.

With four weeks to go, and our 3 biggest tournaments, we are hoping that this is a sign of a team peaking at the right time.

A Sloppy 12-4

This season marks the first time I have ever had a tournament over Christmas break, particularly the weekend before kids return to school and I was really looking forward to it. In the past, players tend to come back from the long break with a little rust, thus I was glad to have a tournament waiting to get some of that rust taken care of before an important week when we got back.

The tournament had six teams with two divisions, so we played the other two teams in our division before advancing to a "place" game. Also, instead of four quarters, this tournament played two 20 minute halves with a running clock (which amounts to basically the same amount of actual playing time). Of the six teams, four were from the city and two were elite academy schools from the 'burbs. Our first game was against one of those schools.

After our two practices at the end of our break I was fairly sure our guys were as ready as they ever could be after two weeks off, but the first couple minutes of our first game showed me otherwise. We were flat and lazy and fell behind 4-2. We took a time-out, shook off the silliness, got our press in order and closed out the first half up 34-15. This game marked the coming out party for our 6'2" center. Since our opponent did not have anyone to match his size, he got lay-up after lay-up on his way to a 16 point half. The second half was more of the same but at a slower pace as we ended up winning 56-36.

Our second game was against a public school that featured an older brother of one of our seventh graders. In their match-up with our first opponent, they did not look like a great team. However, in our game with them- they had a player or two that did not play in the first game and they apparently decided to bring their "A" game.

Like most city schools they played a fast paced offense and added a very effective trapping defense. Our guys hung with them for about 30 seconds before falling behind for good. Their defense rattled us enough that we ended up with a season high for turnovers and were unable to get anything going offensively. We trailed 32-12 at half on our way to losing 58-31. Our center - coming off of his biggest game of the year - failed to score until the very end of the game. Our shooting guard - who averages around 16-17 points a game - had one basket. The gym had low ceilings and arches that extended even lower and got hit at least twice in every game of the tournament. This clearly messed with our shooters' heads as we failed to record even one 3-point basket in the game and the entire tournament. Overall, we looked scared, slow and sloppy. We had no heart and we looked exactly like a team that had taken two weeks off. Very frustrating.

To finish the tournament, we played for third place against a team we had already beaten this year at our tournament. They came to this tournament with essentially the same team we played. Our team, however, was not the team they had played - at least not on this day. Besides our lackadaisical play, we were missing our starting power forward who had missed our two practices and had not called me or anyone else, for that matter.

The game was close the whole way, both teams playing sloppy. Defensively, we were never able to settle on either man-to-man or our 1-3-1 zone as our most effective way of stopping them. Offensively, we ran our new set against a zone fairly well, but our guys were not paying close enough attention to their roles to be effective in carrying it out. At half-time, we were down 13-11. The second half looked a lot like the first half, except now several of our players were beginning to show signs of being tired and showed no heart in battling to try to win the game. I ended up benching our leading scorer for the final 5+ minutes after twice taking him out of the game to plead with him to give us whatever fight and energy he had left, to no avail. We ended up losing 36-30, the only bright spot being that we got to get some of our younger guys into a tense, meaningful situation at the end.

Hopefully, this tournament served as a "taking out of the garbage" for the guys and they return this week to school determined to play better this week as we face two of our closest conference foes.