Sportsmanship

So, I had a referee that said something to me during a game that got me thinking.

A little background:  I only take 10 kids on my teams because it's easier to manage minutes, and work with the team in groups.  Smaller class size in practice lets me work with each kid that much more individually.  I see a lot of other coaches coming into games with 12 and even 14 kids.  I almost feel sorry for those kids, because the good ones are either going to leave the weaker kids in the dust, or get held back as the weaker kids are brought up to speed.

So I'm in a game where we are taking care of business and comfortably in control.  The other coach starts reaching deep into his bench because he knows the game is over and wants to give the kids playing time.  I have no beef with that.  But enter the issue.  One of these weaker kids and one of my bigs go up for a rebound.  My guy has the kid beat by at least six inches, but the other kid managed to get position on him.  My player does his job in that situation and just out-jumps him with no contact.  However he doesn't hold the ball high enough and both kids get hands on it.  The ref calls over the back.  I instantly argue the call.  The ref looks at me and then walks over and says, "Come on coach, its about sportsmanship and the other coach is down his bench."  I turn to him and ask, "What does that mean?"  I understood what he meant about being down his bench, but I guess the ref assumed that being young I was dumb and explained the phrase anyway.  What I wanted to know is why should my player who did absolutely nothing wrong, be penalized because the other team is weak? 

If it truly is about sportsmanship and player growth, then we need to hold these weaker players to the rules.  It is not the referees jobs to teach the game.  That falls on the coach.  At fifth grade, the only call I could see you overlooking as a referee is carrying, but even then once you get about half way through the season you should crack down on that.  Because now, I am in an awkward spot.  I want my kids to respect the referees, but with calls that are clearly wrong, how can that happen.  I want them to be aggressive and learn the game, but with calls like that now the next time in that situation, what does he do, just let the kid in front have the ball? 

It only further enraged me as I watched my guys get called for fouls that never happened, the other team got to take an extra step or shuffle, legal hard screens were called illegal because the defender got knocked down.  I expect my weaker players to perform at the same level as my stronger ones, but I also put them in positions to do so.  That's my job.  But by letting them get away with things because they are weaker, I would be doing them a disservice, as are the referees that follow the philosophy of the refs I had at this particular game.  I hope I don't run into too many of those this season, because I may actually have to get a technical or two.

Thanksgiving Shootout

Well, as I said before I didn't get much time to rest up between seasons.  I spent my limited time preaching defensive intensity, and it carried us through our pool with very little resistance.  The playoffs were a different story. 

Our first game was against a shorter St. Joe's team, but we couldn't rebound to save our lives, and we had no concept of offensive spacing or flow.  But I expected that to a point.  When you get a new team and you don't spend much time on offense that's what you are going to get.  What I didn't expect was for St. Joe's to take care of the basketball.  We managed to get enough pressure to squeeze out a win and advance to the championship.  In the championship game we played against and aggressive team from Bayonne.  They were beatable, but their success was created by their chaos full-court press.  I guess we earned their respect, because they didn't press us until late in the second half, but our lack of offensive IQ hurt us.  Thanks to some clutch free throws and rebounds, we snuck past Bayonne to claim the title of Thanksgiving Shootout Champions, and earned an invite to the March Tournament of Champions.

Not much time to rest again, as our second tournament, the Mike Blake Invitational, started 5 days later. More to come on that later..