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.

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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.

11-2

Last night we braved the snow and slush to play a game that was cancelled last week due to snow and slush. Our opponent came from a school that boasts only eight 8th graders- none of which play boys' basketball. Last year we beat this school by a lot in the first round of our big Lutheran school tournament, this year's squad was not much better.

We had a couple guys starting that do not usually start (one who has never started) as a result of wanting to reward one guy and punish a starter, thus we started out slow- for about 2 minutes. Once we got our act together we assumed control of the game and never let it go. We lead 20-6 after 1Q, 28-6 at H, 38-10 after 3Q and won by a score of 46-15.

The game did little more than allow us the chance to get our younger players significant minutes and baskets. This Friday we play one of the better teams in our conference, but I will be gone (missing only the second game ever in my 7 years of coaching). After that, Christmas break- which both the boys and the coaches need.

10-2 and Our 2nd 2nd Place Trophy

This weekend our tournament was only about 6 blocks south and 4 blocks west of us at a local Lutheran school. It was a 10 team tournament and we were one of the two teams that had to await an early game to find out who our opponent was. We drew the host school, which is one of the two games that I was told last year (by my principal) that I must win (The other game is against our sister school). The host school was where my principal got his start in education and we still have several strong relationships with their staff. They (and our sister school) are probably the closest thing we have to a rivalry.

As I talked to other coaches leading up to the tournament and while at the tournament, it became apparent to me that our team had played several more games than most - if not all - of the participants. Some teams had played as few as 2 games before this weekend, while we had already played 9 (it would have been 10 if not for snow last Tuesday). This gave us an advantage since we have already - in theory - worked through many of our early season mistakes.

Last year when we played the host school, we jumped on them early, they rallied and then it was a decent game before we pulled away at the end. This year we repeated the first step (scoring the first 10 points of the game), but then we decided not to let this game play out the way last year's had gone.

One our opponent settled down in the first quarter they were able to run a few good sets and we lead 15-6 heading into the second quarter. The game stayed pretty much the same for the next six minutes and we took a 27-11 lead into the locker room. So far this season, the third quarter has predominantly been our quarter and we kept it so outscoring our opponent 14-6 on our way to a 41-17 lead with one quarter to go. The fourth was an even matched six minutes as the final score was 57-32.

*****

Our semi-final game was against last year's champion. This team is the only team not from a local school (they travel up from Illinois). Last year's squad gave us our first loss of the season and our only loss before Christmas. They bring a troop of kids (19 this year) and are the most organized and systemic middle school squad I have ever seen. Their talent level was down this year, but they still can throw any guy from the bench into the game and get exactly what the coach wants anyway.

It was evident from the first possession that their plan against us was to be deliberately patient as they ran through their offensive sets multiple times before even attempting their first shot. (Imagine the first game Gene Hackman coached in Hoosiers - only way more passes.) Our guys had probably never even seen a team do this before, let alone played against one doing it versus them. Their first possession took nearly two minutes off the clock before they scored, after which they came right at us with their typical hard nosed man-to-man defense. Our guys responded poorly and chose not to run our offense and abruptly turned it over. Back to defense again and more picks, passes and patience. When we did get the ball back it was more frustration and poor improvisation. With about 2 minutes to go we called a time-out trailing 4-0. We managed one basket - one basket - before the end of the quarter and trailed 8-2.

The second quarter was a near carbon copy of the first. Our opponent was dead set on working through every last cut and pass option of their offense before shooting. Defensively they were everywhere causing our boys nothing but headaches. We again found a way to get ONE basket, but also held them to just five points before our point guard hit a shot from just inside half court to close the gap to 13-7 before half time.

We made two adjustments at half time, the first was to get a seventh grader off our bench and into the game and the second was to tighten up our defense picking them up at 3/4 court. This - combined with our point guard waking up - allowed us to shut them out for the entire third quarter and lead 15-13 heading into the fourth. From there it was a fairly exciting game. With a little under two minutes to play, they hit a three pointer to take an 18-17 lead. We came out of our time-out and were stopped offensively. With just under a minute to go, our eighth grade forward - who has struggled up to now to understand our defensive concepts - found himself guarding his man out at half court. His man caught a pass and turned to face our guy with the ball right out in front of him. Our forward swatted the ball out of his hands, took it up court, switched sides and made the lay-up to pull us ahead 19-18. We got a stop on the following possession and then were fouled a couple times to get into bonus free throws. Out point guard made two to put us ahead 21-18. After taking a time-out our opponent set up a series of picks to free up their best three point shooter, but we had the perimeter blanketed and he air balled his attempt. Our point guard got the rebound and was fouled again. This time nerves took over and he front ended his first attempt. There was a scramble to get the rebound and our assistant (who keeps the book for us - meticulously) had us as getting the next jump ball- but the official score keeper did not. So, our opponent had the ball needing to go the length of the floor in less than 4 seconds with no time-outs and down by three. They ended up not even getting a shot off as we redirected their dribbling enough times to run the clock out and we were on to the championship with an ugly 21-18 victory.

*****

Our opponent in the championship round was a short, fast, good team. They only had one guy even 5'10" tall but they made up for their lack of size with a trapping defense and a lot of running. While our semi-final game was a deliberately slowed down game, the championship was the polar opposite.

The first quarter went about as well as we could expect it to, considering our opponent was a good team. They chose not to start out in their press and they had little difficulty breaking ours. Our top two scorers combined for 12 points and we lead 14-10 heading into the second.

We ran into some foul trouble in the second quarter as three of our starters picked up their second foul. I am of the conservative-Larry Brown approach when it comes to players and fouls. I always sit guys down for the rest of the first half when they get 2 fouls so as to have 3 to play with in the second. With a little over 3 minutes to go in the second, we were down by five and had only two starters on the floor with three reserves (one of which barely ever gets minutes). I was about to put my point guard back in - so as not to let the game get away from us - when the reserve guys started playing lock-down defense and our shooting guard hit some big shots. These elements allowed me to save all our guys in foul trouble and give us a little momentum heading into half time tied at 24.

The third quarter was played at a frantic pace and this ultimately proved to be a bad thing for us. Guys who were normally clutch for us were missing several easy baskets and as a result were too upset to play good defense. We managed a few good stops and a few good shots, but trailed 33-31 with one quarter to go.

At this point in the game it was clear to us that our bigs (center and power forward) were only hurting us as they proved incapable of using their size to our advantage, so we went with our smaller line-up for the rest of the game. The quarter was everything you would expect a championship fourth quarter to be between two evenly matched teams all the way down to a minute to go with the score tied. We were on defense and had a mental lapse leading to a lay-up and then on the ensuing inbound pass, our normally-good-at-making-decisions guard had his pass intercepted for another lay-up and a foul. We were now down 4 and took a time-out. Not out of the game yet, we regrouped and headed back out for the free throw. On a FT, the shooting team has two guys in addition to the shooter who are available to rebound and the other team (us in this situation) have four, leaving two guys to cover the shooter on the rebound. The shooter missed his free throw and, sure enough, got his own rebound. He made another bonus free throw, we squandered another possession and were forced to foul again. They made two free throws to lead by seven and we made a meaningless three pointer at the buzzer to cut the final margin to 46-42.

The loss was frustrating on so many levels.
- For two straight games we let our opponent dictate what kind of game we would play.
- Our bigs do not understand how to play as true post players.
- Our top two scorers missed, between them, thirteen lay-ups.
- For two straight games we failed to run offensive sets that we have been practicing since October, because our opponent played fierce defense.
- Our guys seem to really think they are something. They are athletic and have ability, no doubt, but - at this point - they do not understand that they need to work to be great. This is our biggest challenge with one week to go before Christmas break.

We still have 4 tournaments left this year, 2 of which are big tournaments. We are good enough to challenge for titles in all four, but our level of commitment and our attitudes are standing in our way, for now.

8-1 with a Familiar Trophy

This weekend we were at a tournament at the first school I ever taught and coached at. Last year we took 1st place rather easily defeating the three other schools in the round robin tournament by double digits. This year looked to be slightly different as the host school boasted a 6'5ish" center. (I remember when he was in the 4th grade and was as tall as some of our 8th graders!) All week long we were working on specific defensive strategies to prepare for our game with him on the floor.

I have recently been disappointed with the way our guys respond to teams that we are clearly better than. We seem to think we are better than we are and tend - at this point in the season - to play down to the level of our opponents. Two of the three teams at the tournament this weekend come from small schools that traditionally had small teams and we figured that we would beat them rather easily. I was really hoping the host school would give us a good run and possibly even beat us, just to cut the guys down a level or two in their attitudes.

When we got to the tournament the first game was already going on as we walked to our room for the weekend. As we passed by the door to the gym we all noticed to absence of a player anywhere near 6' tall, let alone 6'5". We changed for our game and went back to the gym. While we were waiting outside the gym, our first opponent's coach walked up to say hi and ask me- with a grin, "How many guys do you have this year with mustaches?" He told me how last year when we played them, his point guard came to the bench at the first time out and told his coach we had guys on our team with mustaches. He then told us that we were going to kill his guys. I never really know what to say in situations like that so I just smiled and said, "We'll try not to."

We did what we could to keep my frail promise, but the match-up was just too unequal to avoid the predicted slaughter. We won the first quarter 22-0 and - with our second five in for the whole second quarter - lead 28-4. The starters got two more minutes in the third and then sat for the rest of the game as we ended up winning 42-8. There was not much to take from the game except for the great efforts we went to to get our back-up, back-up point guard some points. Alas, he did not score.

Before our next game there was a 3-point contest with each team entering 2 players. Last year we easily won this contest and there was no doubt we had the two best 3-point shooters there. Our best shooter - who was part of the winning combo last year - totally choked and we took second place. No mini-plaque this year.

Our second game of the night we matched up with a team that was much closer to us athletically, but not in discipline or ability. They ran an interesting trapping zone defense that featured two guys meeting the ball at half court- but after the initial trap they did not cover guys well and we easily broke it for lay-ups. Heading the other direction, they were the first team this year to by-pass our 3/4 court press by passing over the first two guys with passes that went to the other end's three point line. But we had our center playing safety and their guys wanted nothing to do with him. Even with their ability to get past our press, we did enough right to lead 17-8 at the end of the 1Q and 23-16 at half time.

During our break, we adjusted our press from a 2-2-1 to a 1-2-2. This left us with 2 guys back to defend their over-the-top passes. It worked better than we could have imagined, as we broke again broke a game open in the 3Q outscoring our opponent 18-4 to take a 41-20 lead into the last quarter. From there we played our bench and ended up winning 50-30.

The highlight of this game was that it was my 100th victory as a middle school boys' coach. My wife made cupcakes for all of the boys that had "100" written on them. I think our team was more excited about the cupcakes than the "monumental" occasion they represented. =)

Our final game was Saturday morning with my former school. Ever since last year's tournament - when we both featured 6'+ seventh grade centers - our boys have been looking forward to this tournament and this game, especially when we learned how big their center had grown to. We found out after our first game Friday night that their center had broken his hand Thursday night in a conference game. Without him our opponent had next to nothing to compete with us. We were slow in the first quarter - mostly due to our starters not feeling challenged (my interpretation) - and lead only 15-7. In the second quarter we broke out and went into halftime leading 33-13. The third quarter was more of the same, even with our bench in and we lead 42-15 after three quarters and ended up winning 46-24.

So, we are the reigning back-to-back champions of this tournament and we put three players on the all-tournament team. Being my first school, we love going back to see families we are very close with as well as getting an overnight, out-of-town tournament in. But all this tournament really did for us was give our bench some of their biggest minutes. We experimented one game with our starting line-up but did not face any competition. This coming week we have a conference game and then a local holiday tournament featuring the best team we played last year.

5-1

Last night while our team was dressing after our game, I noticed that one of our boys was wearing a t-shirt that read, "Genius by birth, slacker by choice." I made everyone stop dressing to look at the shirt. That shirt defines who our team is as of right now.

Our opponent last night was a school that is literally around the block from our school (My four year-old son attends kindergarten there). Last year they were one of our better games and this year they returned their best player and are always well coached. In our conference, this school and one other will pose the biggest obstacles to our winning the conference championship.

To start the game we had one starter who was absent from school (and practice) the previous day, so he did not get to start. This did not turn out to be that big of a deal as we were able to get some good defensive stops and transition baskets as we rolled to a 16-8 lead at the end of one quarter.

About 30-ish seconds into the 2nd quarter our point guard/forward/center picked up his second foul. His first foul (in the first quarter) was foolish and his second was an additional dumb foul. He sat the rest of the quarter. A couple minutes later our center picked up his second foul after again attempting to block shots in a manner we have been coaching him not to for 6 weeks now.

With our point and center on the bench we were forced to use a line-up that we have yet to use in a game or practice much with and our opponent capitalized on this to win the second quarter 12-5 closing our lead to just 21-20 at half time.

Our halftime meeting consisted solely of my pleading with our guys to do the things we work on day in and day out in practice. At this point in the season we have gotten by on our athleticism and our two best players scoring a lot, so we have gotten pretty lazy at times and unconvinced that we need to work and improve. Mucho frustrating.

We started the second half as we have many times this year already- in our 3/4 court trap and running off a ton of points. Within two minutes we found ourselves up double digits and firmly in control. Their floor is smaller than regulation which works to our advantage with our press, so we were able to frustrate their guards enough that we got several steals that lead to lay-ups, although not all of our lay-ups went in. We steamrolled them in the third quarter (21-7) on our way to a 42-27 lead heading into the fourth.

Just for good measure we scored the first 5 points of the fourth and were up 47-27 with almost five minutes left. Then we collectively fell asleep or quit caring or some other ridiculous thing middle school boys do when they think they are awesome and their family and friends are cheering loudly for them. It is still hard today to figure out how we allowed our opponent back in the game, but they gave us quite a scare as they slowly made bucket after bucket and we slowly stopped playing our offense and our defense and looked like we were playing a lunch recess game instead of an actual game.

Our lead dwindled to 7 when their best player hit a 3 point with 40 some seconds left. We were able to break their press with ease but immediately turned the ball over when we got to their side. The next possession we found a way to stop them, then throw it away, then give up a basket and then dribble out the clock to hold on to a 49-44 win.

In the locker room, there was not much to say other than to challenge our boys as to whether they wanted to be a good team that beats the teams they are supposed to beat and allows less talented teams to play with us or do they want to be a great team that puts away the lesser teams and competes with and beats the other great teams. We have the talent, the speed and the size (plus a three man coaching staff) to be a great team this year. We need to figure out a way to drive our boys to want to be great.

4-1

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.

3-1 With Some Hardware

One of the reasons that I was jazzed for our own tournament this year was because it gave our guys a chance to play some good teams in a tournament setting early in the season, and we got both Sunday evening.

Our opponent in the championship game demolished both of their first two opponents in the tournament. They had a strong first five that featured a beast of a center, two extremely good guards, and two other very good role players. We had a game plan ready and believed that our first five could hang with them if we played ball the way we are capable of playing.

We headed to our designated room at halftime of the 3rd place game with only 7 players present, four of which were our starters. We were going to make a couple minor adjustments to offensive and defensive sets we had worked on, so it was a little bit troubling that our forward was not present. Before I could get into our game plan, I had to get on a few of our guys who were fully dressed but still wearing sandals instead of their shoes. In this exchange my shooting guard (who often has words for me), decided to tell me how he really felt about my asking him to be ready for a championship game. So, I told him he would not be playing the first quarter. We were now down to 3 starters present and ready to hear the game plan. Not quite the way I wanted to get ready for a game. Fortunately, within five minutes our forward showed up and our shooting guard apologized in front of the team. (I changed his punishment from a quarter to two minutes)

We started the game out sloppily, just as we had the previous game. This team was too good to come out flat against and we immediately found ourselves in a 7-0 hole. We settled down, regrouped and were able to put together a decent run to close the gap to 11-10 at the end of the first quarter, and we would never be that close again.

The second quarter was a mess. The officials were impossible to figure out. They allowed very physical play on the ball from defenders but not down low when two or three guys were defending a shot or going for a rebound. We made several key mistakes but also could not get back on track after a series of calls that went against us. We lost the quarter 19-2 and trailed 30-12 at the half. We made a couple adjustments to our offense and everyone of our boys was convinced we could still win the game.

The third quarter started out with more of the same. Our opponent made good plays, we made some mistakes and the officials continued to confound me. At one point one official told me that I needed to pay better attention to our offense because that was where my boys were failing the most. This started to light a fire under our guys and we immediately rattled off 8 straight points to cut the lead to 11. But then our point guard got called for traveling and our rally was over. We were down 18 at the end of 3 quarters and ended up losing 61-35.

- Offensively our bigs still do not understand what we are asking from them.
- Defensively they are not much further along.
- We were also totally lost on both ends when our shooting guard (who went 6/9 from behind the arc) was not on the floor.
- The modified offense that we used in the second half is something that we could easily incorporate into our sets from this point forward.
- Overall, I think the two intense games we played will serve us well going forward from here.

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!

2-0

Last night featured two things that I have never been a part of in coaching- the first involved our offensive ineptitude and the second with the environment and behaviors of the fans and players at the game.

Our opponent last night was a team we played and beat last year. The thing I remember most about that game was the loud crowd they had and how much I enjoyed the atmosphere from a coaching/competitor standpoint. This year it was just as loud, but not enjoyable.

We started the game out by missing our first four shots, all 3 feet or less away from the hoop. We managed to get past that, though, and score a couple baskets and jump into our 3/4 court press- and we had our press working! We had their offense totally disrupted and were getting easy lay-ups on our way to an 11-2 lead at the end of the first quarter.

We started the second quarter where we left off the first scoring a quick easy bucket, and then our shooting guard (and focal point of our press) picked up a cheap second foul. As soon as he came out of the game we lost the momentum we had built through our press and our offense became stagnant. The rest of the quarter was ugly and we lead 16-9 at half time.

We felt good about things because we would put our shooting guard back in the line-up to start the half right back in our press and we should have been able to blow the game open just like in our first game. However, the SG picked up a quick third foul and came back out immediately. The rest of the third quarter was more of the second with our offense resembling more of a lunch time game than one we have been working on for four weeks. Defensively, our guys were unable to stop their guards from penetrating and our big men have not fully grasped the concept of help-defense we have been preaching and working on for almost a month now. Our opponent had the ball for the final possession of the quarter and could have taken their first lead, but we managed one good stop and found ourselves up by only one point, 20-19, heading into the final quarter.

Even with our full line-up on the floor, the momentum we handed to the home team was proving a lot for us to overcome. But, our SG played smarter, our bigs came up with a couple good rebounds, and our PG was able to get to the basket for a couple easy buckets that propelled us to a 12 point lead with under 2 minutes left. The last minute was a series of desperate shots from them and missed free throws by us, but we held on for a 37-27 win.

When I got the scorebook from one of our assistants I saw that our PG and our SG were the only guys to score! Those two guys had scored all 37 of our points. In retrospect, nobody else on the squad (of the seven that played) even came close to putting the ball in the basket.

The good news was that we won in a hostile, rowdy environment and we learned who our real on-court leader is. On the negative: Our big men were absolutely absent. No points, a couple rebounds, and zero real defense. Only one guy truly was unfazed by the environment, two that were able to function productively. The other guys were in over their heads in regards to having poise in pressure situation- which actually was a very good experience for them this early in the season. This, hopefully, helps us out later (even this weekend) when we have tense games trying to win trophies.

1-0

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!