Interesting weekend for me to say the least...
As a coach you spend time looking at each game looking for where you can improve, what the "next level" is for your team, and that's a tough enough task as it is. Then you have weekends like mine where one team shows up one day and a totally different team the next. It's like a case of stolen identity or something that makes you wonder if 9 guys got abducted and replaced by alien copies or something.
Friday night we had a game, and we couldn't have played any more aggressive. We had our share of mistakes, forgotten rotations, and poor shot choices, but they were minimal and generally we recovered well. If a guy entered a zone, he was met with ball pressure, most shots were contested, rebounds were ripped out of the air. All the stuff we had preached since November was starting to settle into a semblance of a great game of basketball. Add to that an electrifying energy from all the players and we were unstoppable. I even got on Twitter, Facebook, and texted other coaches about how they missed something special. It was crazy. I stayed up until like 2 in the morning just hyped up from that game and thinking of how far we've come and how we can really shake our leagues up if we keep going strong. Never did it cross my mind that two days would be a totally different story...
Sunday we played another team, and the boys showed up with a little extra in their walk. Fair enough, we did ball on a whole new level a few days ago, and they needed the confidence. I was okay with that. We talked about some of the blown rotations on defense, took a little time to focus on the task at hand and took the court. Our opponent came out in a man to man press. Nothing new, we know how to beat this. Turnover, layup. Um, okay. Let's settle in, but it's early and that's just 2 points. We're good. Couple of possessions later - press, turnover, layup. Turnover, layup. Turnover, layup. What in the world is going on here. This press isn't that good. We're beating ourselves. Timeout. Maybe we just have to settle. Let's go back to basic fundamental passes. Dribble with our heads up. Yeah - needless to say that went nowhere and the first quarter is over with a score of 21 - 3. Where did my team go? We've beaten this defensive scheme before. Why are we struggling? There's no energy, we're blowing simple assignments, people aren't talking, we aren't rebounding, we're playing scared. The list goes on and on. And I'm not exaggerating or being overly negative - you watch the video and you'll see I'm just being honest. Let's just say the final score was a little embarrassing...
As a coach, what do you do with this? These games were on such opposite extremes, you can't even say, "Well in both games we did A, B, and C," and go off that. Night and day. And the parent reaction was the same. Friday night and Saturday I'm a genius. "The boys are really improving!" "Great job with the team coach." Then after Sunday's game, there was "Coach, you know that defense [that we've been in all season long but is the best defense we have so far] doesn't work against good teams because we are slow to rotate." "You know, the guys on the floor [that played really well together Friday] aren't the right 5 to generate offense." Really? I kind of know how Avery Johnson felt. "You know, you give me praise for these last few weeks, then we hit a rough spot, and now I'm terrible."
I refuse to let it kill my spirit though. Parents are your average fan. Many of them are fickle and only want to see their child on the court scoring every possible point. I just wish they'd do their talking away from me where their kids and I can't hear it. For the players, well I've got a few hours to figure out something, all I know is that there will be lots of conditioning, drills, and intensity in practice. Players will have to realize that it's that time of the season where you put up or shut up, and that we've worked too hard to have nightmarish performances like Sunday's. We will find delight in any and all forward progress, but cannot stand for any (further) backwards steps by anyone. This upcoming week gives us plenty of opportunity to bounce back, let's see if we can make the most of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment