Third Time's A Charm

Well, since my last post things have gotten off to a pretty good start.  Here's the 'Reader's Digest' version of the last few weeks.

We started our season with a couple of scrimmages.  Both went well considering we had only had the opportunity to practice once due to flooding.  I took the first game as an opportunity to see who would produce and in what situations they'd excel in, which really told me a lot about what I have to work with this season.  It seems that I've got a lot of speed to work with this season.  A lot.  And I have a 6-foot kid on the team, which is a huge help.  Unfortunately, our first scrimmage was against a team with 3 kids his size, so our lack of practice hurt us.  However, it was a good loss, since all the kids played hard all the way to the end and they had fun.  The second scrimmage, after getting things hammered out in the first, was a much different story.  I conveniently forgot to tell them the game was against 7th graders, so there were no pre-game psych outs.  We came out swinging, and jumped out to a quick lead.  However, we got bit by inexperience again, and fell behind going into the second half.  We fought back though and forced two overtimes, and managed to squeeze out a one point victory.  Afterwards, I filled the team in on the significance of their win, which energized them going into the next week of practice.

We had a week of practice, during which I worked defense and basic fundamentals.  We had a tournament on the horizon, and I wasn't about to let us get beat by basic crap.  This season I have a team that can compete, so I'm determined to make the most of it.  Well, that played out well.  It was a three game tournament in Mahwah.  First game was against the NJ Thunder.  I've played this group before, and though they don't usually have a strong team at the beginning of each season, they have a great coaching staff that gets the kids to make pretty good strides as the season goes on.  Our defensive intensity was awesome.  I don't think I could get my Winter Travel team to play with that much intensity.  Our defense carried us to a 23 point victory. The second game was against Crossroads Basketball.  Haven't really played them before, but I figured they would be a little tired since their first game they lost by 1 in a game everyone said was tight all the way through.  More great defense and a second straight tournament win.  The Thunder won their second game, so we ended up having to play them for the championship.  We got a little soft and overconfident, but I straightened that out over halftime and we put that to bed.  Yep, ladies and gentlemen, I finally got the opportunity to say I coached a team to victory in an AAU tournament.

Well, this upcoming weekend we're on tap for another tournament, but this one should be a little more challenging.  The team hosting it, the Gym Ratz, tends to be stacked with speed, so it will push us and we'll see just how good we really are.  I think we can pull it off, but it will definitely require us to have a solid week of practice.  I think we'll do some damage with plays we've put together, and one more week of practice should put us in a good spot.  Let's go Wolfpack!!