Day: December 12, 2023

A kind of bizarre and not very successful week for L on the court, with one very notable exception.

Tuesday CHS played Zionsville, where a travel teammate goes to school. L came out firing early, hoisting six 3-pointers in the first half. She missed them all, but was fouled on one and hit two-of-three free throws. She also had 2 rebounds, an assist, three steals, and no turnovers in the first half.

However, she did not play at all in the second half. She later told us that late in the first half and again in the locker room at halftime, she nearly passed out. The trainer did a check on her, and everything was fine, but decided it was safest to keep her off the court.

Not sure if it was just low blood sugar, a hint of a bug, or something else. She said once whatever it was passed she felt fine. But she only played half the game, the first time this season she’s played less than 25 minutes. CHS lost by four. L would have dressed for varsity again had she been ok to play.

Thursday they took on Guerin, the Catholic school in Hamilton County, where we used to live. L was excited about this game because Guerin has a lot of girls she played against in CYO, most of their good freshmen were playing on the varsity team, and we had heard their JV was bad.

So much for all of that. L had one of her worst games of the year. She was 0–6 from the field (0–3 on 3’s) and did not score. She had four more turnovers. She did play the whole game. Well, all but two minutes. As usual we couldn’t get any offense going and dropped the game by five.

L was involved in a key moment in the game. We were down by just two with under a minute to play when she drove, shot, and drew a foul. The shot missed but she was going to the line with a chance to tie.

Only the referees claimed the contact was before the shot. Girls from both teams had already lined up along the lane and L was at the free throw line waiting for the ball. It seems like everyone but the ref knew that L got fouled in the air. No idea what that dude was looking at. Naturally we didn’t score on off the inbounds and that was kind of the game.

So that game sucked all around.

However…

L again dressed for the varsity game, which was a blowout as CHS was up big the entire second half. I wondered if the benches would get cleared. Sure enough, with just under 2:00 left the Guerin coach sent in her reserves. The CHS coach followed a moment later. L ran to the scorer’s table to check into her first varsity game with a big grin on her face.

Amazingly, she played better than in the JV game. And by that I mean she didn’t do anything negative. She grabbed a rebound. She came close to an assist and had an unofficial hockey assist on another basket. High school is just like college: when the benchwarmers score, the starters go nuts. That was fun. Those 99 seconds seemed to outweigh L’s poor performance in the JV game, as she was super happy afterward.

Saturday we traveled about 45 minutes to Eastern Hancock, the #2 ranked 2A team in the state. We learned the day before that EH was dealing with a lot of injuries and had requested that the JV game only be two quarters.[1] L was, again, pumped, because she figured they were bad and this might be the chance to get another (half) win.

EH’s JV had five girls. Two of them were solid, the other three sucked. Yet our girls still couldn’t run competent offense. It was more of the same: causally passing the ball around without ever really looking to score. Still, we had a six-point lead with about three minutes to play when L had an open look for three. While her shot was in the air I thought, “If she makes this, the game is over.” She missed. The game was not, in fact, over. Nice freaking jinx, dad.

EH threw a press at us after their next make. Our standard press breaker is to in-bound to L, she probes the defense, then if she sees a trap coming she’ll dump the ball to another girl who attacks up the side and reverses to L in the middle if she’s trapped. This has worked very well all year. Saturday the other girl dribbled into a triple team on three straight possessions and lost the ball each time, all turning into EH buckets. That morphed into a 13–3 run to end the half-game, and another (half) loss for the Irish.

L was kind of bad again. 0–4 (0–2) from the field. 1–2 from the line. Two rebounds, an assist, a steal, and four turnovers. Turnovers have been a problem lately. Sometimes she makes shitty passes. Sometimes she isn’t strong enough with the ball. Sometimes she makes a good pass and her teammates don’t catch it. It’s really an all three phases thing right now, and she needs to find a way to be better with the ball.

We could tell she was straight-up pissed after the game. Fortunately she dressed for varsity so we didn’t have to deal with her for a bit.

I got roped into keeping the book for the varsity game, which ended up being a very good one. EH has five seniors back from a team that lost in semi-state last year. They added an amazing freshman, who scored 21. Both teams had six-point leads at one point. One of L’s buddies who is playing up from JV scored a career-high 12. The game was tied at 50 with under a minute left when that EH freshman hit a 3 to break the tie and EH won by three. The EH players and fans were very excited to beat a class 4A team, even if the Irish are just 3–7. For what it’s worth, the varsity has played the 12th toughest schedule in the state, across all classes.

Three games, three losses, and L scored 3 total points. I guess she actually just played two games. Aside from getting into the varsity game Thursday, it was not a great week for her. JV is now 2–8. The good program news is the freshman team is undefeated. We asked L if she would rather play with them. She was very much against that idea.