Well, I've been really bad about keeping up with timely posts about our games. After my last post, where things seemed pretty hopeless. Then we lost to St. Anselm's and The Field School. But in the 4th quarter of the Field game, something changed. I walked to our point guard and said, "Andrew, you have to score, or we're hopeless." At the time, I didn't realize that I was referring to our entire season, but I was. Once he started attacking the basket and hitting threes, our entire season turned around. We started out with a 10 point victory of Queen Anne, 57-47, a mediocre team. A good win for us nonetheless.
Next up was a somewhat more significant. We played the Washington International School. We were up at the half, but down by 13 going into the fourth quarter. Our head coach called a full court man press and we fought and clawed our way back into the game. With time running out, our center Daniel hit a tough put-back to send the game into overtime. In OT we basically just outplayed WIS to a 56-51 victory. Big win against a solid team. Andrew played his second brilliant game, knocking down 7 of 9 free throws in the 4th and OT, while making a number of excellent decisions.
Our next game was against Sandy Spring Friends School. They are a subpar team with one really good player, and they always give us trouble. Our head coach arrived late to the game, so the other assistant and I had to run the show for the first half. We went to the half down 9. When Coach showed up, he threw out the idea of a triangle and 2 defense, and we effectively stopped the other team. Holding their main scorer to 6 points, and pulling out a big win. Andrew was 4/4 from the 3pt line. Ehud missed most of the game after spraining his ankle.
The biggest win of our season came on January 26. We played the Barrie School, which was at this point 11-0 in conference. We systematically cut them down. We played better than we have played the entire year and beat them by 9 points.
Then we played a tough Waldorf team that gives us way too much trouble. We beat them by 8. The worst thing that happened is that Andrew broke his nose. He's now out for two huge game.
Tonight we laid an egg against Covenant Life, the second time they beat us this year. They're not that good. They only scored 21 points last night. We gave up 50. No Andrew today, and no Andrew Thursday against Jewish Day School. We'll see what happens.
1/09/2006
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
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
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