My voice is nearly hoarse after all the yelling I did at our game today. My team is 1-4, but we're not really that bad. Two of those losses came when we were missing starters due to illness. I would love to get them over again. Its hard when you only have seven games and your better players miss practice and games due to sickness, injury, and death. I can't be upset about it, hey its life, no one is going to feel sorry for us, but it sure hasn't helped us win.
I was feeling good about todays game, but I didn't know what to expect. We were missing our hardest working defender(funeral) and our team is a little down with the losses. We couldn't have started out better. We were up 18-4 at the end of the first quarter. And 35-19 at the end of the half. At half time I said we need to come out and bury them at the start so they will give up. I also said we don't want to have a conversation about losing the biggest lead ever in school history. Little did I know how ominous my last words would be.
We absolutely sucked in the third quarter. We were so bad they cut the lead to two to start the fourth. We were turning the ball over, making bad passes, poor decisions, bad fouls, no one wanted to dribble the ball. It was an all around mess. And they had all the momentum and our team was losing it fast.
We were even most of the fourth and then a few bad things happened. Our pg fouled out. Then a minute later our center fouled out on a horrible call. The call was so bad our players jumped out of their seats and onto the court getting us a technical foul. They got four shots and the ball. The lead was 54-49. We had lost two starters-our ball handler and rebounder. I was irate. I was sick. I couldn't believe the position we were in. We had no momentum, we were on the road, we were going to lose. I sat in silent fury and then a thought occurred to me. The way I was acting could prevent us from winning. This game was still winnable albeit we'd need a few changes. So I made them. I went back to man defense, and the other coach played not to lose and to stall. Bad mistake with over 2 minutes left. Adults can't even stall that long, let alone kids.
They turned the ball over, we scored, they did it again, we scored, they did it again, and yeah we scored. It ended up tied at 56 with 30 seconds to go and they had the ball. But again they tried to play out the clock. It didn't work, we got the ball back with 10.8 seconds left. Finally, my team made a smart move and called a time out. I drew up a play, and told em to win the game. My play went just about as scripted, then our unsung hero guard got a wide open look and drained a three pointer. I couldn't have been more elated. He is a good kid, not the best at anything but he works hard. It couldn't have happened to a nicer kid.
Wow! Whatta rush of emotions, from near defeat and despair to jubilation. Just cause a kid made a shot, that's the difference sometimes.
The team told me they were especially happy because they didn't want to hear the how did we lose that game speech on the way home. One player said when James fouled out I looked so mad I looked like the exorcist, but when Preston hit the shot I looked like an angel. I would say he had it about right. That's how I felt too. And luckily right now I still feel elated. Such is sports. The lows suck, but the highs are mighty rewarding.
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