Exactly two months since her last game, L finally returned to the court last night. So a quick update is in order.<\/p>\n
We knew going in that she probably would not play much. This was our opening game in the Indianapolis City tournament, so with (likely) games on Thursday and Friday and Tuesday\u2019s opponent not being very good, there was no need for her to go all out.<\/p>\n
She checked in for the first time with just over a minute to play in the first quarter, to loud cheers from all her teammates. She immediately forced a turnover. And then another. She got the ball in the corner with about 10 seconds left and there was no doubt she was shooting. She took the 3\u2026and left it about two feet short. At first I thought a defender got a hand on the ball but after the game she admitted it was a pure airball.<\/p>\n
She played about four minutes of the second quarter, the last 3:00 of the third quarter, then almost all of the fourth quarter. There was a running clock in the second half so those minutes passed pretty quickly. In total she played about 15 minutes. Her stats? 2\u20135 from the field, 1\u20132 from the line for five points. She was fouled as time ran out in the third quarter and shot her free throws as the only player on the court. She airballed the first, making S and I laugh out loud. Fortunately she swished the second. She grabbed a rebound, had one assist, three steals, and forced three other turnovers. Not a bad line for a kid who looked rusty and winded. The best news is her foot felt \u201cnormal\u201d this morning, according to her. We\u2019ll see how that holds up.<\/p>\n
As for the game? Well, we started it on something like a 40\u20130 run before CRHS banked in a shot late in the third quarter. We won 45\u20132, and that was with our girls missing at least 10 free throws and us not doing much other than pass the ball around in the fourth quarter. I think the win made JV 10\u20133 on the year, although I might be missing a game somewhere. They will play HCHS, who they beat by 17 last month, in the semis Thursday.<\/p>\n
Varsity also had an easy, 40 point, running clock win. The #5 team upset the #4 team in double overtime, so we will get an unexpected opponent in the semis there. Same thing happened last year and a crappy team nearly beat us, so hopefully the varsity girls are focused.<\/p>\n
In other news around the city, Crispus Attucks beat Washington 115\u20135 over the weekend. This, obviously, has had some folks fired up. Attucks pressed and shot 3\u2019s nearly the entire game. They let their best player, who is one of the highest rated juniors in the state, take pretty much every shot in the first half. L told me she heard the girl didn\u2019t even get back on defense and got a lot of uncontested buckets by cherry picking. I guess part of the goal was for her to break Oscar Robertson\u2019s single game scoring record at Attucks, which she did when she hit a 3 for her 63rd point. Before halftime. The only credit their coach, who happens to be that girl\u2019s dad, gets is that he sat her for the entire second half. But most of the other starters stayed in.<\/p>\n
I get that sometimes there are really bad matchups. Look at our games last night. Part of coaching is showing respect for a totally out-matched opponent. I don\u2019t care if you are \u201cworking on stuff.\u201d No team should ever press when their lead is over 30 points, even if you\u2019ve put in your entire JV roster. And you slow the tempo down when you have the ball, not look to run on every miss and steal.<\/p>\n
Attucks lost in the City quarterfinals by 11 last night. To a team I guarantee they have more talent than, but who actually play as a unit and don\u2019t set everything up so that the coach\u2019s daughter can break records. The Hoops Gods are always watching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Exactly two months since her last game, L finally returned to the court last night. So a quick update is in order. We knew going in that she probably would not play much. This was our opening game in the Indianapolis City tournament, so with (likely) games on Thursday and Friday and Tuesday\u2019s opponent not being very good, there was no need for her to go all out. She checked in for the first time with just over a minute to play in the first quarter, to loud cheers from all her teammates. She immediately forced a turnover. And then another. She got the ball in the corner with about 10 seconds left and there was no doubt she was shooting. She took the 3\u2026and left it about two feet short. At first I thought a defender got a hand on the ball but after the game she admitted it was a pure airball. She played about four minutes of the second quarter, the last 3:00 of the third quarter, then almost all of the fourth quarter. There was a running clock in the second half so those minutes passed pretty quickly. In total she played about 15 minutes. Her stats? 2\u20135 from the field, 1\u20132 from the line for five points. She was fouled as time ran out in the third quarter and shot her free throws as the only player on the court. She airballed the first, making S and I laugh out loud. Fortunately she swished the second. She grabbed a rebound, had one assist, three steals, and forced three other turnovers. Not a bad line for a kid who looked rusty and winded. The best news is her foot felt \u201cnormal\u201d this morning, according to her. We\u2019ll see how that holds up. As for the game? Well, we started it on something like a 40\u20130 run before CRHS banked in a shot late in the third quarter. We won 45\u20132, and that was with our girls missing at least 10 free throws and us not doing much other than pass the ball around in the fourth quarter. I think the win made JV 10\u20133 on the year, although I might be missing a game somewhere. They will play HCHS, who they beat by 17 last month, in the semis Thursday. Varsity also had an easy, 40 point, running clock win. The #5 team upset the #4 team in double overtime, so we will get an unexpected opponent in the semis there. Same thing happened last year and a crappy team nearly beat us, so hopefully the varsity girls are focused. In other news around the city, Crispus Attucks beat Washington 115\u20135 over the weekend. This, obviously, has had some folks fired up. Attucks pressed and shot 3\u2019s nearly the entire game. They let their best player, who is one of the highest rated juniors in the state, take pretty much every shot in the first half. L told me she heard the girl didn\u2019t even get back on defense and got a lot of uncontested buckets by cherry picking. I guess part of the goal was for her to break Oscar Robertson\u2019s single game scoring record at Attucks, which she did when she hit a 3 for her 63rd point. Before halftime. The only credit their coach, who happens to be that girl\u2019s dad, gets is that he sat her for the entire second half. But most of the other starters stayed in. I get that sometimes there are really bad matchups. Look at our games last night. Part of coaching is showing respect for a totally out-matched opponent. I don\u2019t care if you are \u201cworking on stuff.\u201d No team should ever press when their lead is over 30 points, even if you\u2019ve put in your entire JV roster. And you slow the tempo down when you have the ball, not look to run on every miss and steal. Attucks lost in the City quarterfinals by 11 last night. To a team I guarantee they have more talent than, but who actually play as a unit and don\u2019t set everything up so that the coach\u2019s daughter can break records. The Hoops Gods are always watching.<\/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":[31,26,13,14],"class_list":["post-16015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-basketball","tag-family","tag-high-school-sports","tag-parenting"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16015","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=16015"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16017,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16015\/revisions\/16017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}