Preparing for all opportunities

We had an interesting week of practice to follow our last tournament. Our focus was clearly on beating the full court press and shooting foul shots. Despite not having full attendance at either of the two practices I feel we made some good headway in accomplishing our practice goals.

Firstly, to help us work on beating a tough full court press, I enlisted the services of five extremely talented young men to put the girls through their paces. The girls were intimidated at first but once they got into the flow of things, I believe they handled themselves very well. Having the guys come out served multiple purposes for the girls. It showed them that they can play at a high level versus top talented players, it demonstrated that they must work together and also winning at the top level means more than just showing up. The night also managed to be fun for both the girls and boys on the court.

We also spent a lot more time practicing our foul shots and saw our percentages go as high as 86% and hovered around the 72% range for most of the time. We attributed this to having the ladies pay more attention to their pre-game routine.

Coming up we only have one practice this week due to the city finals for the boys and I feel it is important to allow the girls to support their school in these events. However, our one practice should be another intense one as I have enlisted the services of five girls from the top city high school and number 2 in province to apply some more full court pressure against us. I may also use this opportunity to work on our inbounds plays as they seem to be ineffective and I do not know if it is because of the defense or our lack of execution. I am interested in seeing the results.

Speaking of rankings, I have been taking a look at the results of tournaments over the last month. We should be securely in the top three for the province. I estimate that we will be 2^nd with Hamilton Transway ranked first, us second and Sudbury Jam ranked third. Transway is clearly the class of the group and our only losses have been to them. Sudbury played a close game with them but we beat Sudbury so the edge should fall in our favour. The initial rankings will not be coming out till later in the month but I like to keep on top of these things.

However, one question lingers in my mind: Do I speak up or allow things to happen as they may? Let me explain. The provincial organization implemented a league system this season and in the original guidelines it plans to have two separate championships. One for the league and one for the rest of the province. We are not in the league so the league championship is not in question for us BUT the top team is in the league. The problem lies in the fact that our team is more competitive than all but one team in the league and from a competitive standpoint we should be competing for this title also. But if we stay put then the number one team would not be in contention for the provincial championship.  So basically if things stay as they were originally stated then we become the clear favorites for the provincial championships. I have a tendency to ask questions and raise eyebrows but I am leaning towards letting things be and not bring up any concerns.

Sometimes it is better to just sit back and watch but be prepared for anything. 

Getting Closer

We are still not quite where we want to be and haven’t reached our goal of Gold but we are getting closer each day. This past weekend we earned another silver medal. Our nemesis is Hamilton Transway as they are the only regulation team to beat us so far this year. We lost by 9 on Friday evening and by 13 on Sunday in the Gold medal game. Despite the score difference Sunday’s game displayed a much better team effort from all. I knew going into the season that Transway would be our main competitor and they are living up to my expectations. We will continue to see them in at least two more tournaments with the final tournament being the provincial championship so they are on our radar as we are on theirs.

Our first game Friday evening was described by some spectators as if the  girls were playing as a group who were just coming off having the flu. From a coaching perspective it was frustrating as we were very close to obtaining victory but we did not bring our complete mental game to the table both from a player point of view and also from the coaching staff. Our offensive game was flowing nicely but our main concern was our defense, or should I say defensive breakdowns. We had too many mental lapses on our defensive assignments and versus a quality team they made us pay for each of our mistakes. We also failed to execute on the few set plays that we have. We run a fluid offense but have set plays for inbounds and we need to clear execution of these sets for success. On the coaching side we admittedly failed to anticipate a full court press and a change in their defensive scheme and as a result we did not make the needed adjustments. Needless to say we not very happy at the end of that game. In fact the thoughts of that particular game lasted with me well into the next day which is something that use to happen in the past but has been uncommon in the past few years.

The Saturday games proved to be much different. We started off our day by having a long talk with the team prior to our game. We emphasized that we as coaches made mistakes and took ownership for our actions. We also addressed the issue of being mentally focused and accountable for everyone. It is ironic because I just finished booking our next session with our Performance consultant for later in the month to concentrate on FOCUS. The end result was that we were able to come out and play two strong games and move ourselves into position to compete for the Gold medal on Sunday.

The Gold Medal game can be compared to the Super Bowl. Defense and turnovers being the difference makers. Our defense was phenomenal but we had way too many turnovers which ultimately cost us the game. We were flat out beat by their full court press and while we were able to break it on the front end we suffered turnovers in the back end. Press break and foul shooting were our downfall. Needless to say our next couple practices will be working on these two areas. Repetition, repetition, repetition.

It should also be noted that we were down a couple players this weekend and that most definitely had a negative effect on us as we could have used them on Sunday. I don’t use their absence as an excuse as the players present must be able to fill the gaps but it did play a factor.

Overall, we are making strides and learning a lot along our journey.