SOOOO much went on our our first day of competition.
AM game we played a Manitoba team that will very easily be playing in a medal game. They've got four interior players over 6'2 that eat space and rebound very well. Their strength is their back court with 3 wings and one sub at the wing who are the fastest at Nationals without a doubt. IF you haven't heard of Kyanna and Kyia Giles, you will: they are the real deal. The combined for 40 pts in less then 28 minutes of playing time each , and with more floor time each would have had a double if not, triple doubles in stats.
That being said, back to us and the game. We came out with lots of nerves and knowing that ,played everyone early: all 12 kids in the first 3.5 minutes. Down 9-0 to start as we struggled with their pressure and speed. Out of a time out won the rest of the quarter, didn't let them rest and played all out defensively to be down 11-9 at the end of the 1st. Poor shooting and fresh legs for the Giles girls meant an awful start to the quarter giving them a 12 point lead before we got our first hoop. Now with the cushion to sub and give their speedsters a break and our inability to get hoops it got ugly quickly. They kept attacking and running while we got more and more frustrated. They finished the quarter on an 18-1 run and we went into the locker room down 40-12.
Coming out we made a little better adjustments offensively but now didn't have the will to defend as hard as we needed knowing with our struggles to score we were not going to come all the way back. Cushion let them sub frequently and asnwer any run we made with fresh legged starters physically beating us up and down the floor. Final was 84 - 40. Key stats were 30 turnovers that became 27 points for them, and 9 -25 from the foul line for us.
Devasted by the turn of events you can imagine that most of the afternoon was spent in meetings and indivdual conversations with kids focused on not letting the morning determine our afternoon. We also got the girls to watch the teams ranked 1through 4 coming in (Manitoba had been ranked 6) and they quickly realized that Manitoba was cleary a top 3 team. We re-focused and got ready to play Sask. the 7th ranked team coming in. (FYI last year at nats we finished last of 9 provinces who attended so we came in ranked 9).
No idea how to describe the Sask game. Words like intense, passionate, ugly, chaotic and bizzarre all come to mind. A coaching friend recently tweeted "everyone loves a rockfight" and that might be the best way. We played a Sask team dramatically bigger then us with very confident shooters and went to war. For 40 mintues we played the best defense we've played all summer frustrating, stiffling, suffocating Sask. We held them to 22 points at half. The problem was in that first half we went 6 - 16 from the foul line and our top 3 scorers all summer long were 1 - 15 from the floor. So we only mustered 20 points.
We went into half excited to be competing but needing to make adjustments to get points. 1 of those things happened. We competed even harder defending out of our minds holding Sask to 19% shooting and close to 40 turnovers in a game we accelerated to give close to 90 possessions to each team. Unforunately our offensive adjustments didn't kick in, but luckily our scorers made enough shots to keep us around late and in the dieing moments we forced a steal that led to a layup we could put in to take the final lead. We sealed it with a freethrow late to win 51-48 for a huge win. Defensively a fantastic team effort, offesnively again too many missed opportunities including 14-34 from the foul line.
Great first day for us. Tomorrow I'll put together some thoughts on what our off day today was like and some of the things I'm noticing at nationals.
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