The 12’s would eventually play 4 games this weekend. Although we finished with 1-3, our record does not reflect how we actually played. We had some help from the 12u West team with the first game and Ishmael helped us out on Sunday because I was not 100% sure how many kids we were going to have. This weekend was a very fun one for me.
Getting the extra game was great for the kids and thank you to everyone who showed up at the game. I was a little late and if you read my 14 recap you will understand why. We knew that coming into the game and Coach O’Neil got things going nicely for you guys because when I got there we had a double digit lead and eventually went on to beat the Long Island Lightning.
The second game of the day was our first pool play game and we played a very big and physical Hudson Valley Wolves team that came out in a 2-2-1 full court press and we had not seen this or even worked on this yet, but the kids did a good job of trying to break and we had a few turnovers, but they did a pretty good job. They built a double digit lead and lead 21-10 at the break. We really struggled because they were so physicaly and would eventually fall 42-21. We did not have our best effort on both ends in that game.
The next game was against a Brooklyn Patroits team that again was very big and physical and we struggled with their full court diamond press. They had built an early 9 point lead but we closed the gap and cut their lead to 6 at the half, 25-19. We came out and handled thier pressure pretty good and we made a nice run at the end. We made it 44-40 with about 4 minutes to go, but we really struggled to score in the last two minutes, but an Ishmael break away layup made it 46-44 with 3 seconds to go. They got the ball inbouds and time expired, but again the kids never gave up and we played for a full 32 minutes.
Our last game of the weekend was against another very big team and a very good team in the OC Crusaders. They came out in another press and we struggled aginst their huge size and they got a lot of transition layups because we were slow getting back on defense. They jumped out on us early and lead 46-22 at the half. With a very frustrated and depressed team we huddled up at halftime and we told the kids that the scoreboard doesn’t matter. That we needed to play the rest of the game to make the kids better basketball players. We told them that we would break the game down to 2 minute clips for 8 total clips in the half. We said go out and win each clip and for the first 4 we did just that and even cut their lead to 15 with about 8 minutes to go. We just ran out of gas and would go on to lose 78-54.
With a 1-3 record, most coaches wouldn’t consider that a success, I do though. The kids saw things that they have not seen in the last two tournaments and now we have an idea of where we are as a team on defense. We need to come out right from the start and not dig ourselves a hole. We need to play as a team all the time and not worry about what the score says, just play. Lets go even harder for the second half of the season and let’s get our injuries all healed up!