My first AD I ever coached under used to schedule numerous games for my teams, which I never had a problem with. However, I used to get frustrated with the games he would schedule on Monday's or back-to-back nights because it did not give me a chance to practice and meet with my teams before the game. After having read Phil Jackson's book (about the 2003-2004 Lakers), I have come to understand that my former AD was merely doing that to give our teams tests early in the season that will benefit them later when we are playing our big tournaments and then they will be playing back-to-back games in the same day and also in successive days. Last night's game was one that fit in this category.
Having come off of a big weekend where we played some great and not-so-great ball, it was understandable that we would not have our best stuff in Monday's practice nor in Tuesday's game. On top of that, our opponent last night was one of our tougher games last season (we took 2 out of 3 from them) and is one of the bigger schools we will face. (With our conference's realignment this past spring we are not in the same conference with the "big" schools, so I have had to try to schedule as many games with these schools as we can get.)
Our opponent had several BIG boys on their squad but no real point guard. Last year our 3/4 court press was very effective against this school so we jumped into it right away last night and saw similar results this time as well. We were sloppy the whole first quarter, but did enough right to lead 14-7 when it was over. Our power forward picked up 2 fouls in the first quarter, so he was on the bench the entire second quarter and was joined by our center just a couple minutes after the 2nd began. This forced me to use a couple guys from the bench that do not usually see action this early in a game. (On top of that, our second guard off the bench did not bring his shorts to the game so he was unavailable.) Our back-up center was as big as their center, so he was able to give us a solid 3+ minutes as we protected our bigs' foul situation.
We got more sloppy in the second quarter which came from getting lazy and not having the enthusiasm we needed to compete on the level we are capable of. Our opponents put together some good offensive sets against our line-up of starters and regular bench players. We lost the quarter 12-2 and found ourselves down 19-16 at the break.
Going into the "locker room" (school kitchen), I actually felt good knowing that we would get our bigs back with 6 fouls to go on them and no one else with more than 1 foul. Plus, with everyone back on the floor we could get back into our press. We started out the second half in our press and scored the first 8 points before their best player turned to his coach to tell him he was tired. (Incidentally, this was also the same moment when a dad from their crowd yelled to their coach that they needed some "fresh legs" in the game.) Their coach responded by subbing in two small guards who were not ready to face our press.
We were able to push the lead to double digits before they took a time-out and settled down. Coming out of the time-out we fell back into our bad habits and gave them back a few baskets before closing the quarter out strong to head into the fourth with a 30-22 lead.
The last quarter was everything I want in an early game like this. Intense crowd, intense action, and my guys doing enough to get the win. We hovered at a four point lead for most of the quarter with them cutting the lead to one basket with under 30 seconds, but we were able to break their press and actually make enough free throws to keep them from catching us as we won 44-38.
Overall, we did just enough right to win a sloppy game where it was clear we were still tired from the weekend. I am hoping this does not make our boys thing they are awesome when they win like this. It is my hope that it shows them that we are a good team that could be better if we bring a high level of focus and enthusiasm to every game. We'll be off for 5 days with the holiday and then back at it with an important week next week including a game with one of our closest rivals in our conference and an overnight tournament at my former school.
1 comment:
Just to let you know, I visit daily and LOVE reading about your team! Thanks for the details about each game. I, of course, don't know WHAT you are talking about most of the time, but you write in such a fun way that I feel like I DO and love reading to the end--sharing in your victory or defeat. And always, you instill each post with the ideals you are trying to live and coach by, which is, of course, what makes the visits so worthwhile. Keep it up, Christian!
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