Grace Brethren

Tonight we played Grace Brethren, a bible school in southern Maryland.
Grace had a VERY athletic team, lots of fast breaking and pressure defense. Coming into the game they were 5-2. One of their losses to Sandy Spring, a very deliberate slow down team, a team we beat by 10. They were our only mutual opponent.

Grace is the kind of team that can hurt us, all their strengths are our weaknesses. Our defense isn't quick enough to cause the turnovers that normally help supplement our sketchy half court offense and their non-stop pressure takes advantage of our suspect ball handling. We hung around for the first ten minutes, mostly because we hit a few threes. That quickly ended because we aren't great three point shooters either. They hit a DEEEEP three at the buzzer, and we went into the locker room down 9.

In the second half we played like crap. The one bright spot was our point guard, a typically turnover prone young man who played out of his mind. When his entire team was playing scared, he stepped up and attacked the basket. Six assists to three turnovers, 14 points, and a couple steals.

The only bright spot of the game was the last 4 minutes. We cut the lead from 20 to 12, and got steals on consecutive possessions. We kept it respectable.

A very odd thing happened at the end of the third quarter. The Grace coach decided to run 4 corners against our 2-3 zone. Which effectively wasted the last 3 minutes of the half standing around. Oddly enough it totally threw off their offensive rythmn to begin the 4th quarter.

Current record: 6-4