3-0

This weekend is our school's first ever invitational tournament. Our high school is hosting it and we invited community schools that have similar educational and/or Christian philosophies as we do. It is our hope that the schools participating (none of which have their own high schools) would eventually see our high school as "their" high school.

As of 6:30pm last night we had 8 schools signed up and ready to go. As of 6:31pm we had only 7 and the school that dropped out was our first round opponent. Our boys thought that was cool, but as a coach I would have rather had the game. So, we had a bye into the semi-finals.

Our opponent won their first round game fairly easily and featured one player that our high school coaches thought might be worth pursuing and a pretty good point guard, plus several other role players. Like most city schools they preferred to run and play a trapping-style defense to create more opportunities to run. Offensively they did not really run sets and/or plays, just gave their two best players opportunities to create shots for themselves. Their best player was big enough and athletic enough to play any position on the floor. Our two best players, however, matched up well with these two guys and left us with a couple advantages in the other match-ups.

Originally thinking we were going to play at 9am, we scheduled breakfast at my house for 7:30. We ate pancakes, bacon and sausage and then headed to the high school for an extended warm-up/shoot around, since our game was canceled. The "first" game of the tournament was then at 10:15 and our boys sat and walked around until our 3:30pm game. That is a long time to ask middle school boys to stay "game ready"- thus we started out slow. Our inability to make shots from right in front of the hoop was killing us as we fell behind early 12-4. Their two stars we getting good looks and not missing, yet we were able to string a couple steals together and close the gap to 12-9 at the end of the first period.

The second quarter we played HOPE ball. Our guards were getting great penetration on their zone and hitting our bigs with sweet passes that got us easy buckets over and over again as we rallied to take the lead for the first time. As we were starting our run, our opponents inexplicably brought a line-up on the floor that did not include their point guard and - briefly - their star. We immediately went into our 3/4 court press and started to blow it open. They did not score their first point(s) until 2 minutes were left in the half. We won the second quarter 19-3 on our way to a 28-15 half time lead.

We were doing all the little things well, which accounted for their stars being totally knocked out of their game. Mostly, it was our guys starting to buy into our philosophy of solid, team, helping man-to-man defense combined with our guys love for and ability to fast break and hit open guys for easy baskets that put us in a great position with half of the game left.

The third quarter we managed to increase our lead by 3 with more of the same solid defense and timely shots. We lead 40-24 with one quarter to play and started the fourth by extending the lead to 20. At this point I began subbing guys out one or two at at time when I saw their coach bringing in his bench. But then he started bringing his stars back in and they were eating up my bench, so I was forced to answer with our best guys until there was not enough time for us to lose our lead. It was totally frustrating because we both could have thrown our benches out there for a good 4+ minutes and enjoyed it, but no.

So, tomorrow we play in the championship against a team with a BIG fella at center and two GOOD guards and two more good role players. We both feature a solid starting five- it looks to be a good match-up.

*****

As the tournament co-chair person, I was at the school all day and sat next to the scorer's table to help the high school students run the clock and official score book and be available to help defuse any small "fires".

The "highlight" of the day for me came early in the morning when one school had their entire team present, but no coach. He finally shows up with 6 minutes on the clock before his game. I show them to their classroom to change and he leans in to tell me that they do not have any uniforms. Three days ago our semi-final opponents called to tell me the same, so I had a set of YMCA practice jerseys for them to wear. I also had about 7 more on hand so I found them and gave them to the team with no jerseys. The only problem was that they had 15 players. So, here I am in their classroom, surrounded by 12, 13, 14 year-old boys in white t-shirts and A-shirts, putting pieces of masking tape on the front and back of their shirts and writing numbers on them in Sharpie! Only in the City!