Wednesday, November 16, 2005
It Has Begun!!!
It's ON!
The 2005-2006 basketball season has begun locally. Our 7th and 8th grade girls played their first games last night, and the freshmen who were the apples of my eye last year begin their schedule with a scrimmage Friday night.
Last night, I was happy again, at last.
Our season openers were at home, against the other county middle school, our arch-rivals and sister school. Fiat from on high has declared that henceforth our rivalry shall be against Dalton, not Bagley; but come on... we still know the truth.
Bagley is evil.
For one thing: they're the new school. A nice, big, modern facility in the wealthy northern part of the county. They get the best of everything; we get the leftovers. But that's forgiveable. Somebody has to be the golden child, and why shouldn't it be them?
No, what's unforgiveable is this:
They recruit.
I have no proof of this, of course, unless you count the dark rumors I've heard as proof. Or unless you count the vows I had from certain students last year that they would not defect to Bagley... only to arrive at school this year to find out that they had indeed defected. Their starting seventh grade point guard swore to me she'd be back at Gladden... she wasn't. (It's not her fault, and I have no animus against her, it's just crushing disappointment. And wonderment at the judgment involved in the move; she didn't get to play at all last night, beyond the first few minutes, while if she'd stayed with us, she'd have played at least thirty or thirty-two of the thirty-six minutes.)
(UPDATE: Okay, I'm a dope. Each quarter in middle school ball is six minutes... which add up to twenty-four, not thirty-six. So my little point guard buddy couldn't have possibly played even thirty minutes of the game. But twenty, certainly.)
They also drove up the score. Against NGMSAL rules. The final was 42-10, an unconscionable result. I mean, sure, win by ten or fifteen, but thirty-two? That's poor sportsmanship. And there's no reason for it but meanness. Against our team -- only one of whom had ever worn a basketball uniform and played before last night -- Bagley fielded a team of rec ball champions and veterans of traveling teams. (Whom, as you will recall from the preceding paragraph, they recruited from us.) They scored at will and kept us from even crossing the half-court line on offense. They subbed, sure, but even then they continued to score at will and keep us in the backcourt, while our poor green players froze like deer in the headlights, unable at times even to remember the simple offensive sets, disheartened and discouraged and tired in the second quarter.
(So what would I have done, had I been coaching Bagley and my subs were dominating the game? Simple: I would've taken a few subs out and played a four- or even a three-man team. The rules of basketball state that you can have no more than five players on the floor; you can have as few as you want. I would have allowed my opponent to close to within ten or so, then put back in my full team of subs, and if they'd narrowed the gap any more after that, I'd have returned the starters. You don't have to run a score up to 42-10. That's just ridiculously unsportsmanlike.)
UPDATE 2009:
When I wrote the foregoing four years ago, a 32-point margin seemed like a lot. But a couple of years later, another Bagley team kept starters in and full-court pressed our 7th graders the entire four quarters and ended up beating us 70-7. Now that is unconscionable.
Still, I've by and large converted to the "it's your job to stop my offense" school of thought. Mostly. Though 70-7 is disappointing, it's mainly disappointing because it was adults using kids to humiliate other kids.
Also, today I'd never ever suggest playing a three- or four-man team against five. That would be insulting.
(As I write this, the Duke Blue Devils are up by 30 over Seton Hall in the NIT quarterfinals, but I'd be willing to bet the final score won't be quite that close. Besides, that's the upper echelon of the NCAA, the rarified atmosphere of ACC basketball, where Duke is ranked number 1 and is under no moral obligation at all to be gracious to their opponents, beyond observing the simple rules of the game and maintaining a sense of decorum and not stepping on opposing players when they fall, as former Dukie Christian Laettner once did in a game. Laettner is one reason I dislike Duke, even though he hasn't played there in nearly 15 years. Duke's fans are the other reason I hate Duke. When it comes to college ball, I favor UVA and ABD: Anybody But Duke.)
UPDATE 2009: I still hate Duke.
Of course, the outcome of the seventh grade game had been a foregone conclusion; all day long, I heard comments from our players like "We're going to lose" and even "I hope I don't have to come off the bench." When you have attitudes like that, defeat becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But part of me says that at least they didn't have their hopes crushed. They lost, but they expected to lose. Rather reminds me of my own short-lived basketball career when I was in sixth grade, and we were 0-6 or something. Those losses hurt, but they never surprised, and I think that made them more bearable. The one thing that you have to watch coming out of losses like that are backbiting and blaming; if some of the players are noticeably better than others -- which they always are -- they will tend to blame their weaker sisters, sometimes volubly and in front of everybody. This creates dissension and hurt feelings that are often impossible to repair in the course of a season, if ever, and that utterly destroy the team trust and cohesion that is essential to good basketball. I know this from personal experience from the inside.
But despite the drubbing, all the seventh-grade girls were there today for practice. And they worked harder than I've ever seen them work before, even the ones who normally cut up and have to be herded more firmly than the others. They ran drills to improve their speed and footwork and ballhandling, and I do mean they ran, something I'd not seen in their plodding approach to practice heretofore. They're bouncing back from their first defeat... I hope they can bounce back from the rest. God bless them for their tenacity, and reward with victories their willingness to work hard and eagerness to please their coaches.
(And if no victories are forthcoming, Lord, at least help us all learn what You are trying to teach us through our defeats.)
The eighth-grade game was totally different.
And a great deal more fun to watch.
The first thing I noticed about Bagley's starting lineup was that three out of the five starters had originally been Gladden students. And looking over at their bench, I saw at least four more former Gladden kids there. My comment to a student sitting beside me: "It's like we're playing ourselves out there."
Our lineup, on the other hand, included exactly no girls who had originally been Bagley students before the big redistricting of last year (not to mention the recruiting). One of our girls had gone to Bagley in the seventh grade after attending sixth grade at Gladden; to my mind, that makes her originally a Gladden student. So: Gladden students go to Bagley and play; Bagley students come to Gladden... and get cut.
(Which, I realize, may undermine my thesis that that seventh-grade point guard should've stayed with us so she could have played more minutes, but I assure you there is no way she would have been cut. Besides... she was a Gladden kid!)
Now, this year's eighth-graders were, in seventh grade, fairly pathetic. They would admit this, though reluctantly. They didn't work as a unit; the guards were hotdogs and the posts were usually surprised to get a pass from the backcourt. And while the guards were hotdogs, one of them routinely took long-distance shots without being open or having a good look, while the other routinely stole the ball and drove the entire length of the court, easily outdistancing the transitioning defense with her tremendous acceleration and footspeed... only to lay the ball up full-force, without taking into account the forward momentum the ball already had on it (when you make a lay-up, the faster you're going, the softer you put it up), and the defense would simply grab the rebound at half-court and transition back to offense.
They finished last year 4-8.
Last night, they looked like a completely different team.
They're not, personnel-wise. All the starters are back from last year, with the exception of one girl who decided to pursue softball full-time instead, and recently tore her ACL while jumping over a campfire. (No, she was not the problem. She's one of the best athletes Gladden has ever seen, and one of the most easy-going and popular kids, with all the various social groups, in the school. She understood the importance of teamwork. I repeat: she was not the problem last year.)
But they've changed. Matured. They've made corrections and adjustments to their game. The posts are now fierce and fearless at both ends of the court, willing to take hard contact to draw the foul and hit the floor when necessary to make the play. The guards are still swift as cobras... and they've given up most of their bad habits. One of them had 19 points last night (eight of them in the last two minutes, off a couple of steals and a couple of spectacular lead passes), the other 11. They're lethal now, and they know it; the challenge with them is going to be keeping it from going to their heads.
(Note as I write this: I was right that Duke's lead over Seton Hall wouldn't be thirty at the end of the game. The final score is 93-40, Duke.)
It was an emotional game. That is a euphemism for a bloody screaming match between the coaches. Not at each other, of course, except indirectly, through the refs, like angry children fighting by proxy through their parents. And the refs handed out a couple of strongly-worded warnings and a technical (not against us, thankfully). And this is where I made my own meager contribution to the game, by rattling a coach's cage some:
All night long, both of the opposing coaches were standing, typically with one yelling at the players while the other yelled at the ref. This is against regulations; if there are two coaches on the bench, only one can be on his/her feet at a time. I kept expecting the refs to call them on it, but they never did until the fourth quarter, when finally one of the refs turned and rebuked them for both being off the bench at the same time. Being seated at the scorer's table, right behind the benches, I heard this admonition clearly, and I said something to the ladies at the scorer's table along the lines of "It's about time they got called for that; they've been doing it all night." The nearer Bagley coach heard me, and started to laugh sardonically. The ref who'd just told him to sit down heard him laughing, assumed the coach was laughing at him, and upbraided him some more. To which the coach responded "I was laughing at the big guy up there!" To which the ref responded "Yeah, sure you were." To which I responded with laughter of my own. Which was not sardonic at all, but deeply amused, indeed.
It was a satisfying game to watch. Bagley scored first, but we came back quickly with a flurry of points that brought us a lead we never relinquished... though we came within a point on several occasions. The issue was decided, finally, in the opening minutes of the fourth quarter, and the last two minutes of the game were the dagger in the heart of the opponent's hopes. Final score was (if I recall correctly) 49-35.
The freshmen play tomorrow night, and the JV and Varsity play Friday.
Basketball season is HERE, and it's AWESOME, BABY!!!
...Okay, I promise I won't channel Dick Vitale any more this season.
|
The 2005-2006 basketball season has begun locally. Our 7th and 8th grade girls played their first games last night, and the freshmen who were the apples of my eye last year begin their schedule with a scrimmage Friday night.
Last night, I was happy again, at last.
Our season openers were at home, against the other county middle school, our arch-rivals and sister school. Fiat from on high has declared that henceforth our rivalry shall be against Dalton, not Bagley; but come on... we still know the truth.
Bagley is evil.
For one thing: they're the new school. A nice, big, modern facility in the wealthy northern part of the county. They get the best of everything; we get the leftovers. But that's forgiveable. Somebody has to be the golden child, and why shouldn't it be them?
No, what's unforgiveable is this:
They recruit.
I have no proof of this, of course, unless you count the dark rumors I've heard as proof. Or unless you count the vows I had from certain students last year that they would not defect to Bagley... only to arrive at school this year to find out that they had indeed defected. Their starting seventh grade point guard swore to me she'd be back at Gladden... she wasn't. (It's not her fault, and I have no animus against her, it's just crushing disappointment. And wonderment at the judgment involved in the move; she didn't get to play at all last night, beyond the first few minutes, while if she'd stayed with us, she'd have played at least thirty or thirty-two of the thirty-six minutes.)
(UPDATE: Okay, I'm a dope. Each quarter in middle school ball is six minutes... which add up to twenty-four, not thirty-six. So my little point guard buddy couldn't have possibly played even thirty minutes of the game. But twenty, certainly.)
They also drove up the score. Against NGMSAL rules. The final was 42-10, an unconscionable result. I mean, sure, win by ten or fifteen, but thirty-two? That's poor sportsmanship. And there's no reason for it but meanness. Against our team -- only one of whom had ever worn a basketball uniform and played before last night -- Bagley fielded a team of rec ball champions and veterans of traveling teams. (Whom, as you will recall from the preceding paragraph, they recruited from us.) They scored at will and kept us from even crossing the half-court line on offense. They subbed, sure, but even then they continued to score at will and keep us in the backcourt, while our poor green players froze like deer in the headlights, unable at times even to remember the simple offensive sets, disheartened and discouraged and tired in the second quarter.
(So what would I have done, had I been coaching Bagley and my subs were dominating the game? Simple: I would've taken a few subs out and played a four- or even a three-man team. The rules of basketball state that you can have no more than five players on the floor; you can have as few as you want. I would have allowed my opponent to close to within ten or so, then put back in my full team of subs, and if they'd narrowed the gap any more after that, I'd have returned the starters. You don't have to run a score up to 42-10. That's just ridiculously unsportsmanlike.)
UPDATE 2009:
When I wrote the foregoing four years ago, a 32-point margin seemed like a lot. But a couple of years later, another Bagley team kept starters in and full-court pressed our 7th graders the entire four quarters and ended up beating us 70-7. Now that is unconscionable.
Still, I've by and large converted to the "it's your job to stop my offense" school of thought. Mostly. Though 70-7 is disappointing, it's mainly disappointing because it was adults using kids to humiliate other kids.
Also, today I'd never ever suggest playing a three- or four-man team against five. That would be insulting.
(As I write this, the Duke Blue Devils are up by 30 over Seton Hall in the NIT quarterfinals, but I'd be willing to bet the final score won't be quite that close. Besides, that's the upper echelon of the NCAA, the rarified atmosphere of ACC basketball, where Duke is ranked number 1 and is under no moral obligation at all to be gracious to their opponents, beyond observing the simple rules of the game and maintaining a sense of decorum and not stepping on opposing players when they fall, as former Dukie Christian Laettner once did in a game. Laettner is one reason I dislike Duke, even though he hasn't played there in nearly 15 years. Duke's fans are the other reason I hate Duke. When it comes to college ball, I favor UVA and ABD: Anybody But Duke.)
UPDATE 2009: I still hate Duke.
Of course, the outcome of the seventh grade game had been a foregone conclusion; all day long, I heard comments from our players like "We're going to lose" and even "I hope I don't have to come off the bench." When you have attitudes like that, defeat becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But part of me says that at least they didn't have their hopes crushed. They lost, but they expected to lose. Rather reminds me of my own short-lived basketball career when I was in sixth grade, and we were 0-6 or something. Those losses hurt, but they never surprised, and I think that made them more bearable. The one thing that you have to watch coming out of losses like that are backbiting and blaming; if some of the players are noticeably better than others -- which they always are -- they will tend to blame their weaker sisters, sometimes volubly and in front of everybody. This creates dissension and hurt feelings that are often impossible to repair in the course of a season, if ever, and that utterly destroy the team trust and cohesion that is essential to good basketball. I know this from personal experience from the inside.
But despite the drubbing, all the seventh-grade girls were there today for practice. And they worked harder than I've ever seen them work before, even the ones who normally cut up and have to be herded more firmly than the others. They ran drills to improve their speed and footwork and ballhandling, and I do mean they ran, something I'd not seen in their plodding approach to practice heretofore. They're bouncing back from their first defeat... I hope they can bounce back from the rest. God bless them for their tenacity, and reward with victories their willingness to work hard and eagerness to please their coaches.
(And if no victories are forthcoming, Lord, at least help us all learn what You are trying to teach us through our defeats.)
The eighth-grade game was totally different.
And a great deal more fun to watch.
The first thing I noticed about Bagley's starting lineup was that three out of the five starters had originally been Gladden students. And looking over at their bench, I saw at least four more former Gladden kids there. My comment to a student sitting beside me: "It's like we're playing ourselves out there."
Our lineup, on the other hand, included exactly no girls who had originally been Bagley students before the big redistricting of last year (not to mention the recruiting). One of our girls had gone to Bagley in the seventh grade after attending sixth grade at Gladden; to my mind, that makes her originally a Gladden student. So: Gladden students go to Bagley and play; Bagley students come to Gladden... and get cut.
(Which, I realize, may undermine my thesis that that seventh-grade point guard should've stayed with us so she could have played more minutes, but I assure you there is no way she would have been cut. Besides... she was a Gladden kid!)
Now, this year's eighth-graders were, in seventh grade, fairly pathetic. They would admit this, though reluctantly. They didn't work as a unit; the guards were hotdogs and the posts were usually surprised to get a pass from the backcourt. And while the guards were hotdogs, one of them routinely took long-distance shots without being open or having a good look, while the other routinely stole the ball and drove the entire length of the court, easily outdistancing the transitioning defense with her tremendous acceleration and footspeed... only to lay the ball up full-force, without taking into account the forward momentum the ball already had on it (when you make a lay-up, the faster you're going, the softer you put it up), and the defense would simply grab the rebound at half-court and transition back to offense.
They finished last year 4-8.
Last night, they looked like a completely different team.
They're not, personnel-wise. All the starters are back from last year, with the exception of one girl who decided to pursue softball full-time instead, and recently tore her ACL while jumping over a campfire. (No, she was not the problem. She's one of the best athletes Gladden has ever seen, and one of the most easy-going and popular kids, with all the various social groups, in the school. She understood the importance of teamwork. I repeat: she was not the problem last year.)
But they've changed. Matured. They've made corrections and adjustments to their game. The posts are now fierce and fearless at both ends of the court, willing to take hard contact to draw the foul and hit the floor when necessary to make the play. The guards are still swift as cobras... and they've given up most of their bad habits. One of them had 19 points last night (eight of them in the last two minutes, off a couple of steals and a couple of spectacular lead passes), the other 11. They're lethal now, and they know it; the challenge with them is going to be keeping it from going to their heads.
(Note as I write this: I was right that Duke's lead over Seton Hall wouldn't be thirty at the end of the game. The final score is 93-40, Duke.)
It was an emotional game. That is a euphemism for a bloody screaming match between the coaches. Not at each other, of course, except indirectly, through the refs, like angry children fighting by proxy through their parents. And the refs handed out a couple of strongly-worded warnings and a technical (not against us, thankfully). And this is where I made my own meager contribution to the game, by rattling a coach's cage some:
All night long, both of the opposing coaches were standing, typically with one yelling at the players while the other yelled at the ref. This is against regulations; if there are two coaches on the bench, only one can be on his/her feet at a time. I kept expecting the refs to call them on it, but they never did until the fourth quarter, when finally one of the refs turned and rebuked them for both being off the bench at the same time. Being seated at the scorer's table, right behind the benches, I heard this admonition clearly, and I said something to the ladies at the scorer's table along the lines of "It's about time they got called for that; they've been doing it all night." The nearer Bagley coach heard me, and started to laugh sardonically. The ref who'd just told him to sit down heard him laughing, assumed the coach was laughing at him, and upbraided him some more. To which the coach responded "I was laughing at the big guy up there!" To which the ref responded "Yeah, sure you were." To which I responded with laughter of my own. Which was not sardonic at all, but deeply amused, indeed.
It was a satisfying game to watch. Bagley scored first, but we came back quickly with a flurry of points that brought us a lead we never relinquished... though we came within a point on several occasions. The issue was decided, finally, in the opening minutes of the fourth quarter, and the last two minutes of the game were the dagger in the heart of the opponent's hopes. Final score was (if I recall correctly) 49-35.
The freshmen play tomorrow night, and the JV and Varsity play Friday.
Basketball season is HERE, and it's AWESOME, BABY!!!
...Okay, I promise I won't channel Dick Vitale any more this season.
