A super busy weekend, with plenty of time in the car.
Kid Hoops
L had her first, big, out-of-town tournament as a high schooler in Cincinnati. It was a three-day deal, and we had booked two nights in a hotel. Then we got the schedule which had our first game at 12:30 Friday and our second at 6:30 Saturday night. Our team agreed it was easier to drive back-and-forth than try to kill approximately 30 hours between games.
So we headed down Friday morning, played, ran to UC and had lunch with M and grabbed a bunch of her stuff to move home, and headed back to Indy. Saturday afternoon we returned to the Queen City, checked into our hotel, and got to the gym for two evening games.
The hoops were decent. We went 2–2, three of the games were very close, which made it fun.
We won our first game 50–9, starting the game on a 19–2 run. That was a far cry from our first travel tournament two years ago when we lost by approximately the same score.
Saturday we fell behind by 14 in the first half of our first game. We steadily worked our way back into the game and tied it with just under a minute left. But we gave up an and-one, couldn’t get a shot, and the game seemed to be over. I was talking to a dad next to me when we somehow picked off an entry pass, threw the ball ahead, and got an open-look from 3 to tie. It rimmed out and we lost by 3. Good game, though.
Our second game Saturday was against a team that beat the girls we beat Friday by four, so we figured we had this one in the bag. Jinx! We gave up a 9–0 run to start the game, and the girls kept trying to make the 6–8 point play to erase most of the deficit in one shot. We finally answered with a 7–0 run but were still down five at the half.
We started the second half much better and finally took the lead about four minutes in. We stretched that out to a seven-point margin and seemed to have the game in hand. Cue the 8–0 run by the other girls. Fortunately we rallied again and held on to win by four.
Then Sunday we had a single game. This was a “live” event for recruiting, so there was no bracket play. This one was good, too. It was against a team we beat by one in Indy while we were on spring break. We did our usual dig a hole early thing and played from behind all day. Never more than five points down, but each time we got it to one or two, we couldn’t get over the top. I believe we took the lead once briefly in the second half, but couldn’t stretch it out. We had it tied twice in the final 90 seconds but never had the ball with a chance to lead. We ended up losing by two.
Both the parents and kids agreed at our post-game meal that even though we lost two of them, we much prefer these close games. L told me she thinks it makes her better because she has to stay focused. And while it’s more tense, it is a lot more interesting to care about the result until the final buzzer.
L played decent. She didn’t score much, only eight total points for the weekend. She did have 13 rebounds and seven assists with just 3 turnovers. In that last game, especially, she was great moving the ball and playing defense. She got isolated in the post against a big girl on one possession and did a terrific job battling, making the girl pass out twice before she finally took a bad shot and L got the board. Her jumper still is a mess so she was reluctant to take any. In the last game she also had two beautiful drives she couldn’t finish, which would have helped in a two-point game. And her biggest mistake was in the last game when she got caught on a screen and bumped a 3-point shooter as she tried to fight through. That girl hit two of three free throws which, again, were kind of important. That was my one coaching point for the weekend: when you get caught on those screens, you have to let the shooter go because the refs will always call that foul when you try to block them from behind.
I took over reserving the team hotel rooms this year, in hopes of avoiding some of the bad places we got last year. This tournament is “stay to play,” meaning you are supposed to use the official travel site to book your rooms and do so only at hotels on the list. Even though we booked in February, all the decent hotels were taken, so I booked at a Quality Inn that seemed to be in a good area and got good reviews.
Well, it wasn’t as bad as the hotel we stayed at last year that literally had people doing crack near the dumpsters, but it wasn’t great either. I don’t think it had been renovated in 40 years. The entire place smelled like a combination of weed and Indian food. The girls found what they claimed to be a heroin needle outside. L said she heard people fighting in the hall in the middle of the night, which I somehow slept through despite not sleeping very well. For the after-game hang, we went to the much nicer hotel across the street where two teammates who booked late were staying.
So not great. But our room was clean and we only stayed one night. I have another iffy place lined up for our next trip to Louisville next month. Fingers crossed…
This whole Stay to Play thing is such a scam. I think the majority of the time they don’t really care where you stay, especially for a team at our level. But as travel organizer I didn’t want us to get denied entry because we couldn’t prove we’re in an approved hotel. And I wanted us to be less than 20 minutes from the buildings we are playing in plus stay for a reasonable rate since our families are spread across a fairly wide swath of the economic spectrum. Feels like you have to come up short in at least one of those three areas – quality of hotel, location, or price – to find a hotel at these big tournaments.
Prom
While I was doing the Good Dad thing and watching my youngest kid play basketball out-of-town, I was missing my middle kid’s prom night. Which I think qualifies as a Bad Dad thing, right? 😬
Fortunately things seemed to go fairly well here for C on her big night. She had a date who is just a friend, which ended up being a good thing because he acted like a bit of a douche from what I was told. There was some stress getting ready, which is almost required on prom night, right? But she recovered and it was like a 98% great night. Good weather, she avoided the assholes she wanted to avoid and most of her friends got through the night without drama.
When we were at lunch with M on Friday she said C had told her she just wanted it to all be over. That’s the sad thing about events like prom: there’s so much prep and pressure on the night that it can be hard for kids to relax and actually enjoy the evening because they are so wound up about 50 different things.
Pacers
Yeesh. After a week of hearing almost every national writer pick the Pacers to upset the Bucks, mostly due to Giannis being unavailable for at least the beginning of the series, the Pacers clearly were not ready for the big lights of the playoffs. It was like a five point game when I muted it when C came down to tell me her prom details. Next thing I knew the Bucks were up by 20 and Dame Lillard was hitting everything. That’s not the way to start a series at all. The Pacers looked like a team that hadn’t been in the playoffs in four years. The Bucks looked like a team that was laser-focused on erasing all the negativity and mediocrity of their regular season. It’s only one game of seven, but the Pacers at least needed to be competitive in game one.
Tyrese Haliburton continues to look like a shell of the player he was pre-injury. This might be the most destructive hamstring pull in NBA history. I believe the Pacers missed their first 14 3-pointers. We’ll see if Rick Carlisle can get this shit fixed for game two.
PJ
Hey, that new Pearl Jam album is, indeed, very good!