Recap - Part 2

So to continue where I left off with my last post...

Even without me, my boys managed to secure another tournament championship, and extending our win streak to nine.  As happy as I was for them, I knew that this was not a good sign.  I hate when I'm right.  Last week's practices were less than stellar.  No focus, no desire, and completely unproductive.  To make matters worse, when some of my bench players tried to encourage some of the starters to "get it together", they were met with all kinds of attitude and disrespect.  Perhaps my philosophy is a little flawed, but if you are going to get complacent and stop working hard to keep getting better, then I'm going to let you beat yourself.  The great teams don't say "We're good, we don't need to get better and keep working hard," they keep getting better because with each win that target on your back gets bigger and bigger.  So it was time for a Laker-esqe fall from glory (you can't tell me you didn't clown the Lakers after losing to the Cavs last season).  Ok, so that might be a little extreme, but we needed a wake up call. 

Well, we got it, having to be in Bound Brook, NJ at 8:30 am.   Nothing more exciting than waking up on a Saturday as if it were a workday.  We all get to the Central Jersey Halloween Hoops Tournament all set to dominate like we had in tournaments prior.  I have to be honest, I didn't really feel all that confident the whole ride down; something felt off.  I look around and I've only got 7 players.  My center got himself grounded and 2 others had conflicts.  Not quite the end of the world, but then we find out that the schedule was changed and we're there for an extra hour before we play.  Good more time to try to get that confidence.  An hour later, we're doing the warm-ups and we can't make a lay-up to save our lives.  "This is going to be one of those games," I say to myself as I try to compel my guys to get back to simple basics.  We come out ice cold and shoot way too many jump shots that don't even hit iron to really threaten our opponent and we suffer our first loss in a tournament.  Little time to hang our heads as the second game would start in 10 minutes.  No big speech, no getting angry, just a quick are we going to lose both these games, or is someone going to step up and get back to how we do things.  Short roster and all, we pull out a win and control the game all the way through.  Third game was a bit of a struggle, thanks to sloppy play.   I guess that one loss didn't settle it in their minds that they weren't invincible, because there was way too much razzle-dazzle and not enough scoring.  We turned the ball over in that games in ways I hadn't seen from this team ever.  Tried to explain to the guys that our next opponent, the Gym Ratz, would take advantage of sloppy play and would easily beat us.  Again, I hate when I'm right.  We got out-hustled and outplayed right into our second loss.

Hopefully we get a revenge match-up, but more importantly hopefully we learned some lessons last weekend:

• Everyone on the team is there for a reason, and getting yourself grounded hurts the team
• You are never too good to stop getting better
• You play the way you practice

Well, we'll see tomorrow.  I'll break out my last plays this week, and then the next couple of weeks will be skill refinement before we all split up for our travel season.  I'd love nothing more than to see us go into the Bergen Catholic tournament and dominate again after an amazing week of practice.  Let's see if I'm right again :-P

Recap - Part One

So, work hit a whirlwind, and my personal life's been somewhat of a mess, which has led me to fall behind yet again in posts.  My plan is to get you all up to date by the end of the weekend, but I make no promises as I still have more games and tryouts to attend this weekend.

After taking a week to build on the success we've been having this season, we entered into the third Fall Classic One Day Shootout tournament of the season.  Two new teams showed up to this one, and they along with the CrossRoads squad, met defeat at the hands of my team's intense defense.  It was pretty bad at times, I recall going into a half time break up 34-11.  But it gave my bench plenty of time on the floor, which I'm sure will prove valuable towards the end of the season.  I did have to miss the championship game of the tournament because I had to hold a tryout for my Winter Travel Team. 

The tryout went well, and that team is looking like it will be a fairly good, well-rounded team, with a bit of height to go with it.  Not the fastest group I've coached, but I think we've got enough speed to not have that be a glaring weakness.  Nothing really prepares you for having 16 kids tryout though.  While it's great to have that kind of turnout, it stinks because that means you have to make six phone calls that no one wants to get.  I managed to barrel through all those calls and we should be ready to get that team going pretty soon.

I'd write a little more, but the site has added some new stuff to play with that I want to try out before it gets too late.  Hopefully I'll be able to get a mobile version of my blog up so you can read it anywhere!!

Double Take!!

Hey everyone!  I've got good news from this past weekend! 

In my last post, I had said we were playing in a Gym Ratz tournament.  I'm assuming they didn't field enough teams, so I was a little bummed to hear that it had been cancelled.  That moment of sadness was erased when I found out they would be playing in the same tournament as us anyway.  I wanted to see how my team would stack up against another up-tempo team, and it turns out I was going to get to play two of their teams.   Our first game was against their 6th grade squad, and as expected the game was pretty intense, which is what I expected.  When my guys played good, solid basketball, we controlled the game and the lead.  However, the plague of inconsistency struck, and in our moments of not-so-great basketball, the Gym Ratz capitalized and closed the gap.  Fortunately, we had more great moments than bad ones and held on to win by 8.

Our second game was against the Gym Ratz - 5th Grade, and I purposely told my boys that they were 5th graders.  Some people may wonder why, but I noticed that my boys were getting a little cocky and I wanted them to get "hit in the mouth" because of it.  Sure enough, my squad took the 5th graders lightly and we were only up by 8 at the half.  Perfect.  Time for a halftime speech!!!

 That's what you get for playing like garbage.  Those 5th graders wouldn't have decided to play up if they didn't thing they could beat you, and sure enough they are pretty close to doing it. You have two choices in the second half:  Get embarrassed an end your win streak to a team of 5th graders, or take this game seriously and dominate.  Don't tell me which one you are going to do, just go out there and do it.  Let your game tell me.

Won that game by 16, but it could have easily been a much larger margin if I didn't believe in sportsmanship.

The final game was the championship game against the NJ Drive.  First time I've ever played them, but I was able to watch one of their games, and I could tell they had no issues with contact.  It was a very physical game (but well within the rules) and we played well.  The physicality of the game I could tell was causing some "comfort" issues with my boys, but we played through it and ended up with our second championship title.

I'm not going to lie.  Things are much more fun when you have a good group of kids who are all on the same page and have what many people refer to as "the hunger."  When everyone is playing to win, you spend less time trying to motivate and more time improving, which makes you more competitive sooner and the kids enjoy the game more.  We still have work to do, but we are worlds ahead of where other teams I've coached have been at this point in the season.