What a weekend! I assume a lot happened in the world, but last weekend was a live period for college basketball recruiting, and there were several massive tournaments in the Midwest. We played against or saw teams from Pennsylvania, Washington state, California, Colorado, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Michigan, Georgia, Illinois, Connecticut, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Nevada, Kentucky, Ohio, Kansas, Missouri, plus a ton of teams that didn’t have a location in their name so we couldn’t identify them.
The best player I saw was a 6’5”-ish girl from Michigan. I randomly walked over to her game as it was ending. The seats reserved for college coaches were filled. People were lined up three-deep around the court. I only saw her line up for a rebound so didn’t see anything of her game. I also tried to find her on a recruiting list but had no luck. Of course, while she plays for a Michigan team, she could be from anywhere, so without a name I was kind of stabbing in the dark.
L’s team had seven games in five days, in two different tournaments, in two different cities, so the days are a bit of a blur. I didn’t see any of Spain’s fantastic Sunday, Tadej Pogacar blowing open the Tour de France, the Home Run Derby, or anything else that was newsworthy. Fingers crossed nothing happened that will be in the history books one day.
Kid Hoops
No need to give a full breakdown of all seven of L’s games. That would take too long plus they run together to me at this point. It wasn’t a great weekend, anyway. Her team went 1–6 in those seven games.
Two of losses were against teams we had no business being on the same court. Both play the equivalent of two levels up from where L’s team is slotted in the AAU hierarchy. Thursday we lost to a team from Pittsburgh by 25. Friday we lost to a team from North Carolina by about the same score, but where we were only down 10 at the half in the first game, we were down 10–0 two minutes into the second game.
We later learned that North Carolina doesn’t have the same restrictions as Indiana when it comes to high school teammates playing together. In Indiana, only three girls from the same high school program can play travel ball together. There are zero rules in North Carolina, so this team was mostly from the same school. Not only have they been playing together for years, they play together year-round. Makes sense that they looked like a well-oiled machine.
Plus they were just really good. Their best player scored 23, and we had a running clock for the last 17 minutes of the game. She hit 3’s. She drove and scored. She blocked shots and grabbed rebounds. An athletic, 6’1”-ish player. I wish I had written down her name to follow if she ends up anywhere in three years.
Another loss came in double overtime to a team from the Seattle area. I missed this game but I guess we had every chance to win in regulation and OT, but blew both, then L had a chance to win the game in the second OT but didn’t get a foul call. In this tournament double OT ended when a team was up two points. In our second tournament, double OT was timed and the third OT was sudden death. Can we get some consistent rules here, tournament organizers?
The fourth loss was the most frustrating of the weekend. This was to another team from that same North Carolina program. We started up 12–0 before giving up a 14–0 the other way. The rest of the game was back-and-forth. L hit a 3 with about 3:00 left to give us the lead, but we gave up an immediate 3 on the other end and never got the lead back. Our girls just faded badly and couldn’t handle the physicality of summer ball.
These first four games were here in Indy. Sunday we drove down to Cincinnati for two days.
We lost the first game by 11. Again, we wilted against the physical nature of summer ball and trailed by 14 at the half. We finally started being tough in the second half and cut it to three but gave up back-to-back 3s that killed us. L had a half-court shot go in-and-out at the halftime buzzer. I told her if that had dropped, we would have won. The math doesn’t work out there but I insist the momentum shift would have been massive.
Finally, in game six, we played a bad team from Colorado. It took us a half to get going but ended up winning by 25.
Then Monday we finished against a team from New Jersey. They kept getting up by 5–7, then we would come back. We had a little run right after halftime and got it down to three. L missed a tough runner to cut it to one, we gave up a 12–0 run, and the game was over.
Yikes.
I mentioned this a couple times in there but our girls just looked super uncomfortable with the adjustment to travel rules after playing high school ball in June. Refs call almost nothing in travel ball to keep the clock moving. So teams are super physical knowing they can get away with it, and our nice, mostly suburban girls, just do not like that. I bet we win at least two of those games we lost with high school rules in place.
Plus you could tell that all seven teams we played against practice on a regular basis, where we had a couple partial practices around the holiday weekend that never had more than half the team there. There was a lot of grumbling from our parents about how our program needs to change their high school model, which does not allow for regular team practices except for the highest level teams. Our organization will have its own facility starting this fall. We hope that means the high school girls can get at least one practice per week in there, but there’s been no word about next year’s model yet.
Our team is not the most talented – I’d say we have one girl who would be a varsity player at any school, and then not until she’s a junior or senior – but they are very smart and when they had a chance to play together a lot in May, looked really good against similar competition. Getting practice time would not make a difference against those high level teams. I’m confident we would have won at least two more games if we practiced on a regular basis.
How did L do?
She had two really good games, then was decent in the others.
She guessed she scored 13 or 15 in that double OT game, but didn’t look at the scorebook to confirm. Our coach texted me and said she played well and did a great job getting to the rim and finishing in that game.
She had 13 in the game we blew the big lead. She should have had 15 but she totally wiped out on a breakaway. She claimed there were wet spots all over the court and slipped on one. She also had four assists and three steals in this game.
In the other five games, she averaged just under five points. Didn’t hit many 3s. Like most of her teammates she had way too many turnovers. Her free throws had been great all summer, but something was off there this weekend and she went just 1–5 (that I saw).
You can definitely see how all her work has paid off in her finishing. She was super aggressive all weekend and had her fair share of shots blocked inside. But she’s learned how to find an angle and get a shot up on the rim that often falls in. She takes some crazy-ass shots sometimes, but a decent amount of them either crawl in or at least have a chance where they used to be wild tosses that had no chance.
She was not enthused on the way home. She’s pissed more about her team and their inability to get on the same page than the losses. She complains about girls that don’t know the plays. Our offense is not super complicated but, again, when you don’t practice, teammates who aren’t like her and learn where everyone is supposed to be quickly are going to struggle. A couple girls in particular were always in the wrong spot on both ends and it killed us in a couple games.
On the other hand, one of our girls who is new to basketball and is struggling to figure out how 6’1” body and a new game at the same time had a couple stretches where she was really good.
We go to Louisville next weekend for our final event of the summer. Based on the early, partial schedule we’ve seen, we should be playing teams closer to our skill level. Fingers crossed…
Teeth
It’s been a rough dental summer in our house. All the girls have had to get multiple fillings. Pretty awesome when we just have a preventative dental plan.
Both M and C have had to go in for multiple visits to get everything fixed. One of C’s new fillings was giving her a lot of trouble. So, rather than go to L’s first game Friday, I took C to the endodontist for a consult. Fortunately there’s no need for a root canal at the moment. The doc was hopeful that the sensitivity is just because the filling is so close to the nerve and in time there will be new calcification that insulates the nerve better. But there is also the chance C will still need a root canal down the road.
When C told the endodontist she goes to CHS, the doc said her kids graduated from there a few years earlier.
“You probably know their crazy cousins, though.” One of her nephews was in M’s class and they were friendly. Another is in C’s class, but they run in different circles. And her niece is one of L’s best friends. Later we found out that until a few weeks ago the doc lived two doors down from one of M’s best friends. In fact, M went to her daughter’s grad party a few years ago just because she was at her best friend’s house that day. And the doc’s son goes to UC, although he’s older than M and they wouldn’t overlap in classes.
Small world.
Democracy
I don’t write about politics much these days. It depresses me. I think we’re in a very bad place, and headed to a worse one, no matter who wins this year’s elections. Or the 2026 ones. Or the 2028 ones. Our process seems hopelessly broken. Despite it seeming like most rational people want other choices, seek elected officials that will work to find common ground and represent all instead of a narrow set of interests that will keep them from getting primaried, we remain stuck with the mess we’re in.
Yet it seems like I need to share a few words about the shooting Saturday night. Very few words.
Once the initial shock passed and we got some clarity on the situation, the thought I was left with was Malcolm X’s famous line about chickens coming home to roost.
In this case, when you forge a political identity and movement based on fear, hatred, and manufactured bogeymen; make said movement about a person rather than an ideology; endlessly malign and delegitimize anyone and any view that is counter to yours; lie, lie, lie, and lie again; and throw in a heaping dose of paranoia, well, it’s not surprising we got here. All the ingredients are there in America 2024 for a disaster. It’s a bit of a surprise it took this long for us to reach this point. I’m hopeful this was a momentary blip. I fear it was the beginning of an even more difficult and tense time in our nation’s history.
It’s sad when you start hoping climate change destroys the world before our nation has a chance to fall apart.