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This week started out not so awesome. Not even 15 minutes into Monday's practice I had to send home one of our 8th graders (a major contributor) because his attitude and effort stunk. This episode highlighted my biggest problem with the team so far- I cannot settle on 5 guys to start for us that represent what we want our program to be about. So, with our first game looming I graded each guy on our ABC's - Academics, Behavior, Character and on how much they could help the team basketball-wise. I introduced our starters Tuesday and went to work from there.

Wednesday during the day I was informed that a mother of one of our 7th graders (a potential starter down the road) was pulling her son from the team because of his behavior and grades. This represents one of the things I strongly dislike about coaching middle school teams. First, I have to totally agree with a parent of a 12 year old who says that she needs to clamp down on her son's foolishness. He's 12 years old and if he does not get serious now, he might not learn his lesson until it is too late. Also, middle school parents tend to be very reactive with grades and such and often choose not to let the athletic department (ie. me) go through our probation and suspension steps to deal with kids and their grades. Alas, he is off the team unless he makes some changes (unlikely) or Mom has a change of heart (also unlikely).

Thursday rolled around and brought with it our first game of the season, but not without some drama first. A 7th grader built up a hefty quote writing punishment from Wednesday and he and I agreed that if it was not finished by Thursday morning, he could not suit up Thursday night. He did not have it finished. Down to 9 on the roster.

More disconcerting was my shooting guard- a major contributor on our squad. He was so jacked up for the game he wore his black compression shirt under his school shirt and it was clearly visible- a no-no in our handbook. Being the Dean with Super Powers to detect the slightest bit of non-compliance with our standards, I saw his shirt and asked him to take it off (like I do EVERY other student who wears a non-white undershirt that is easy to see). He refused. Again and again. When I confronted him on it later in the morning he snapped on me, calling our rules "ignorant". (Oh, the irony that middle school kids will never understand when they mis-use a word but demonstrate the meaning of a word in their mis-use of the word!) Our "conversation" culminated with my saying, "Maybe you should just go home," to which he replied, "Fine." And then went upstairs, got his gear bag, gave me his jersey and warm-ups and then went to my office and waited for me to call his dad to pick him up. In what had to be a God-ordained moment, Dad was at work. My player ripped a paper, punched a divider in my office, violently rubbed his head, sat silently for 5 minutes and then wrote the quotes I gave him. 90 minutes later he was good to go back to class, but not before he apologized for the incident. My entire relationship with this boy was spelled out in 2.5 hours. The highs and the lows. Man, I love my job! (Most days.)

We actually had very little trouble getting to the game - except for the accident that sent us down another side highway. (One of our assistant coaches this year grew up in Milwaukee so he had an alternate route ready to go via the cell phone, nice.) We got to the school at 5:15 to watch the girls' game at 5:30. Our girls only had 5 players eligible to play and 2 were late. The game started 15 minutes late and our girls' valiantly got whooped. With only one returning player from last year, the past couple of weeks have been difficult. They look to only get better from here on out.

Our game, however, was another story. Being the first game of the year, with a mish-mash starting line-up I expected to not be awesome from the jump- and we weren't. We stumbled our way to being down 10-8 at the end of the first quarter. Our offense was stagnant against their zone and our guys were not playing defense like we had taught them. The second quarter was more of the same, but we started to get better offensive possessions and some steals. We missed several lay-ups and close in shots but managed to lead 20-18 going into the break. Going into the locker room our 6'2" center had only one basket and our best all-around player had zero points.

At half time we decided to come out in our 2-2-1 zone press that worked so well for us last year. It appears it will do so also this year. A minute into the second half we lead 22-20 but got two straight 3 point shots to extend the lead to eight. One guy in our press did not really know what he was doing, but we were forcing them into enough turn-overs to pull out to a 16 point lead. We needed a couple subs at the end of the quarter to get a couple guys a break and our lead fell to 12 at the end of the 3rd quarter.

The 4th quarter, however, we turned it back up and ran away with a 58-30 victory. I was able to get our four bench players 3+ minutes at the end and all of them got some good looks at the basket, even though they did not all score.

Our opponents were really close to matching our size and had one fairly good player. They also had a really good offensive set that involved several good picks and cuts and they ran it well. Ultimately, our press disrupted this and forced them to play our tempo and style. Defensively their zone was really lazy and left our jump shooters open frequently for whatever shot they wanted.

I was troubled by our conditioning, guys were very tired at multiple moments of the game- we will need to put more emphasis on this next week. Also, our center finished the game with only 2 points. Part of that was because he plays all the way back on our press and does not get into the action when we get steals, but when we were on offense he did not get involved enough. Our guards chose not to rebound either. In games like this, we got away with these lazy tendencies, but they will need to be addressed as we go forward.

The game was fun to be a part of - good crowd, intense action, big margin of victory - and it helped the new guys finally get to see how we do what we do. Our next game is Tuesday and then we host our own tournament next weekend.

GO TIGERS!