A lot of youth basketball last week. I\u2019ll try not to stretch this out too long, but you know how I get when I am typing about hoops.<\/p>\n
L\u2019s St P\u2019s team visited the undefeated, first place squad last Tuesday night. St B\u2019s was 5\u20130 and their closest game was an eleven-point win. Their average margin of victory was 21. They are coached by a former NFL player and they are from the south side of Indy, so we figured they would be tough.<\/p>\n
St B\u2019s jumped out to an 11\u20132 lead pretty quickly. We made a couple runs but couldn\u2019t get within a single possession. Most of the game the margin bounced between six and nine points. St B\u2019s wasn\u2019t doing anything special. They were just playing very sound basketball and getting open shots inside while our girls were struggling to find any looks. We rebounded the hell out of the ball – it was our best rebounding game ever – but all-too-often would turn the ball over immediately after the rebound.<\/p>\n
Still, we were down just 21\u201316 going into the fourth quarter, already in the bonus, and actually shooting free throws well. Our coaches had adjusted the defense at halftime and we were packing the lane, forcing St B\u2019s to shoot from outside. They rewarded us by chucking brick after brick.<\/p>\n
We just couldn\u2019t put together enough consecutive stops-and-scores to get over the hump. We were again down by nine late before we made our customary run, only to run out of time. We got a defensive rebound, L came roaring up the court and drained a long two with two seconds left to cut it to two. We fouled immediately, they missed their free throw, but our half-court attempt came up woefully short.<\/p>\n
Damn.<\/p>\n
Saturday we had two games with the Cathedral team. They were supposed to practice Friday, but too many girls had the flu and it was cancelled. We were also missing three girls Saturday because of CYO games. To fill in, the coach brought three girls up from the B team.<\/p>\n
In game one you could tell we were a team that hadn\u2019t practiced in two weeks and had subs on the roster. Bad effort, terrible offense, no communication, and people getting lost on defense. We were down nine at the half. And for some reason our girls, who had two subs, looked more tired than their opponents, who were playing with just five.<\/p>\n
The coaches spent halftime coming up with some new plays and we used them to get L two quick layups. We trimmed the lead down to two at one point but could never get it any closer, losing by eight.<\/p>\n
Game two was one we had been looking forward to for a couple weeks. We were matched against a team coached by L\u2019s AAU coach and which featured four of her AAU teammates with their middle school classmates. A couple other girls from the travel team came to watch. I had been texting with the AAU coach all week, getting my excuses in early about the illness, lack of practice, etc. We all thought it was fun and games.<\/p>\n
And then his girls came out and curb-stomped us.<\/p>\n
Remember all those games early this fall when the AAU team couldn\u2019t hit a 3? Those same girls hit five 3\u2019s in the first half, along with just about everything else they threw up. We were down something like 22 at halftime. The lead was well over 30 for most of the second half but we got it down to a respectable, gulp, 26 at the final buzzer.<\/p>\n
The only upside was L scored 10 and had some nice moves. One of her travel teammates watching from the stands got video of her making a sweet Euro-step to score on one of her other AAU friends.<\/p>\n
L was embarrassed by the result. And she was mad that her team kind of stinks. I told her she needs to calm down and give the team a chance to get the entire roster together, to get some practices under their belts, and give the coaches an opportunity to figure out some kind of functioning offense. It would also be nice if they learned to play team defense instead of standing and watching when a teammate gets beat. But, again, that\u2019s all about practice time together. I also reminded her the Cathedral coaches will watch her effort and attitude and those impressions can help or hurt her the next few years.<\/p>\n
Sunday was the final CYO game of the regular season. We played St L, a school that we generally beat one year, lose to the next. We were due for an L and St L was 5\u20131 coming in to our 3\u20133.<\/p>\n
We destroyed those chicks.<\/p>\n
It was 9\u20132 after one, 17\u20136 at halftime, 26\u20136 after three, and 44\u201311 at the final buzzer. L and her best friend both scored 12, so they were fired up to each have outscored St L on their own.<\/p>\n
This was an especially satisfying win. St L has a girl I\u2019ve written about before who is a bit of a head case. She shoved one of our players last year. We heard she got a technical at a game earlier this year for intentionally elbowing someone. St L also has some very obnoxious parents.[1]<\/a> Their coach is kind of a douche. L\u2019s best friend\u2019s grandfather coached against that guy 30 years ago and they still do not get along. The game was at Chatard high school, and after the game the grandfather was offering to pay L\u2019s high school tuition if she went there instead of Cathedral. The Chatard varsity coach ran the clock, and came over to ask L, \u201cDon\u2019t you love shooting on these rims?!?! Don\u2019t you want to go to school here?!?!\u201d Laughter all around, although L shook her head no.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n One of our coaches texted later in the evening saying that she heard St L was missing their point guard, who is very good. My response, \u201cShe\u2019s not 33 points good.\u201d<\/p>\n St L\u2019s might have been missing their lead guard, but our girls would have beaten every team they\u2019ve played this season Sunday. It was the best game, by far, any of our St P\u2019s teams has ever played. Great defense. Patient on offense. Decent on the boards and at the line. L pushing the tempo. Her buddy scoring down low. Hell, we shot over 35% from the field, which has never happened. It was a lot of fun to watch.<\/p>\n We ended the regular season 4\u20133, in fourth place. We lost to the first place team by 2, beat one of the second place teams by 33, and had a lead on the other second place team in the final minute. We also had the bad luck of losing our first game of the year to a team who lost their best player, who dropped 20 on us, after that game and hasn\u2019t won since.<\/p>\n Now they get a week to prepare for a rematch with St B in the first round of the tournament. Because, you know, you can never seed a tournament in Indiana\u2026\ud83d\ude44<\/p>\n A lot of youth basketball last week. I\u2019ll try not to stretch this out too long, but you know how I get when I am typing about hoops. L\u2019s St P\u2019s team visited the undefeated, first place squad last Tuesday night. St B\u2019s was 5\u20130 and their closest game was an eleven-point win. Their average margin of victory was 21. They are coached by a former NFL player and they are from the south side of Indy, so we figured they would be tough. St B\u2019s jumped out to an 11\u20132 lead pretty quickly. We made a couple runs but couldn\u2019t get within a single possession. Most of the game the margin bounced between six and nine points. St B\u2019s wasn\u2019t doing anything special. They were just playing very sound basketball and getting open shots inside while our girls were struggling to find any looks. We rebounded the hell out of the ball – it was our best rebounding game ever – but all-too-often would turn the ball over immediately after the rebound. Still, we were down just 21\u201316 going into the fourth quarter, already in the bonus, and actually shooting free throws well. Our coaches had adjusted the defense at halftime and we were packing the lane, forcing St B\u2019s to shoot from outside. They rewarded us by chucking brick after brick. We just couldn\u2019t put together enough consecutive stops-and-scores to get over the hump. We were again down by nine late before we made our customary run, only to run out of time. We got a defensive rebound, L came roaring up the court and drained a long two with two seconds left to cut it to two. We fouled immediately, they missed their free throw, but our half-court attempt came up woefully short. Damn. Saturday we had two games with the Cathedral team. They were supposed to practice Friday, but too many girls had the flu and it was cancelled. We were also missing three girls Saturday because of CYO games. To fill in, the coach brought three girls up from the B team. In game one you could tell we were a team that hadn\u2019t practiced in two weeks and had subs on the roster. Bad effort, terrible offense, no communication, and people getting lost on defense. We were down nine at the half. And for some reason our girls, who had two subs, looked more tired than their opponents, who were playing with just five. The coaches spent halftime coming up with some new plays and we used them to get L two quick layups. We trimmed the lead down to two at one point but could never get it any closer, losing by eight. Game two was one we had been looking forward to for a couple weeks. We were matched against a team coached by L\u2019s AAU coach and which featured four of her AAU teammates with their middle school classmates. A couple other girls from the travel team came to watch. I had been texting with the AAU coach all week, getting my excuses in early about the illness, lack of practice, etc. We all thought it was fun and games. And then his girls came out and curb-stomped us. Remember all those games early this fall when the AAU team couldn\u2019t hit a 3? Those same girls hit five 3\u2019s in the first half, along with just about everything else they threw up. We were down something like 22 at halftime. The lead was well over 30 for most of the second half but we got it down to a respectable, gulp, 26 at the final buzzer. The only upside was L scored 10 and had some nice moves. One of her travel teammates watching from the stands got video of her making a sweet Euro-step to score on one of her other AAU friends. L was embarrassed by the result. And she was mad that her team kind of stinks. I told her she needs to calm down and give the team a chance to get the entire roster together, to get some practices under their belts, and give the coaches an opportunity to figure out some kind of functioning offense. It would also be nice if they learned to play team defense instead of standing and watching when a teammate gets beat. But, again, that\u2019s all about practice time together. I also reminded her the Cathedral coaches will watch her effort and attitude and those impressions can help or hurt her the next few years. Sunday was the final CYO game of the regular season. We played St L, a school that we generally beat one year, lose to the next. We were due for an L and St L was 5\u20131 coming in to our 3\u20133. We destroyed those chicks. It was 9\u20132 after one, 17\u20136 at halftime, 26\u20136 after three, and 44\u201311 at the final buzzer. L and her best friend both scored 12, so they were fired up to each have outscored St L on their own. This was an especially satisfying win. St L has a girl I\u2019ve written about before who is a bit of a head case. She shoved one of our players last year. We heard she got a technical at a game earlier this year for intentionally elbowing someone. St L also has some very obnoxious parents.[1] Their coach is kind of a douche. L\u2019s best friend\u2019s grandfather coached against that guy 30 years ago and they still do not get along. The game was at Chatard high school, and after the game the grandfather was offering to pay L\u2019s high school tuition if she went there instead of Cathedral. The Chatard varsity coach ran the clock, and came over to ask L, \u201cDon\u2019t you love shooting on these rims?!?! Don\u2019t you want to go to school here?!?!\u201d Laughter all around, although L shook her head no.[2] One of our coaches texted later in the evening saying that she heard St L was missing their point guard, who is very good. My response, \u201cShe\u2019s not 33 points good.\u201d St L\u2019s might have been missing their lead guard, but our girls would have beaten every team they\u2019ve played this season Sunday. It was the best game, by far, any of our St P\u2019s teams has ever played. Great defense. Patient on offense. Decent on the boards and at the line. L pushing the tempo. Her buddy scoring down low. Hell, we shot over 35% from the field, which has never happened. It was a lot of fun to watch. We ended the regular season 4\u20133, in fourth place. We lost to the first place team by 2, beat one of the second place teams by 33, and had a lead on the other second place team in the final minute. We also had the bad luck of losing our first game of the year to a team who lost their best player, who dropped 20 on us, after that game and hasn\u2019t won since. Now they get a week to prepare for a rematch with St B in the first round of the tournament. Because, you know, you can never seed a tournament in Indiana\u2026\ud83d\ude44 One of them complained about us to the CYO office last year after the big girl shoved our player. \u00a0\u21a9 Humble brag: he\u2019s been low-key recruiting her all year. It\u2019s not just because he likes her and sees potential in her. That class is really small at all schools and talent is hard to come by, so he\u2019s trying his hardest to get as many north side girls as he can. \u00a0\u21a9<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[31,30],"class_list":["post-11524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-basketball","tag-youth-sports"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11524"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11526,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11524\/revisions\/11526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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