H.A. @ Parrott

Hi Girls,

Without a doubt one of the most disappointing losses ever in my coaching career. Even having to play 5 against 7 (5 players and 2 referee's) I felt we had the better team and should have been able to separate ourselves from Parrott. Sometimes it just comes down to having to make a play. It could have been a steal, a rebound, a basket, not making a turnover, a hustle play or even simply not fouling them so much, whatever, sometimes as a team someone or several someone's have to step up and make a play and even though we tried hard we just did not get it done.

The sad thing about it is we should not have put ourselves in the position that they would have a chance to beat us at the end of the game. In the first quarter we scored ZERO points. In the second quarter we scored 4 points and in the 4th quarter we scored 2 points. I guess the best news of the night was Parrott also beat Cary Christian so we are probably tied with CCS for second place 2 games behind Parrott. Of course that is not much consolation for this game.

BTW, the official that took Emily's made foul shot away from us said he was sorry and that he probably made a bad call. I will explain it to you in practice. Of course its not like an apology does us any good after the game is over.

1- Scoring: Jamie 10, Lindy 6, Lindsey 2. Thats it.

2- FG%: Team; 36.4%* Lindy 3/4***, Jamie 4/8**, Lindsey 1/3*, Casey 0/1, Emily 0/1,
Jesse 0/2, Alex 0/3. 36% is usually good enough to win, this time it was not. I think the fact we did not rebound well and we did not turn them over more cost us the game as much as any one area.

3- FT%: Team; 28.6% 2/7 Jamie 2/2****, Lindy 0/2, Emily 0/3. (Parrott 5/25= 20%) If they had been a good foul shooting team we would have been out of it. If we had made ours chances we would have won. 50% is the MINIMUM winning percentage for our level of play.

4- Rebounds: Team 9D-1offensive ; Lindy 3D, Jamie 2, 1D-1offensive, Emily 2D, Jesse 2D,
Mer 1D. One of our pre-game goals was to be strong on the glass and go hard to the offensive glass. APA just did not look that big and physical to me. Rebounding is a lot like defense, its a little ability and a lot of hard work and want to. Only one offensive rebound is unacceptable.

5- Steals: Team 11; Lindsey 5 **, Jamie 2*, Lindy 2*, Jesse 2*. We have been averaging around 20. It takes everyone playing hard at the same time and moving your feet. Reaching is just a foul.

6- Assists: Team 2; Lindsey 1, Jesse 1. Not very good numbers for sharing the ball and passing the ball effectively. We should have more than this on just inbounds plays.

7- Blocks: Team 4; Emily 2**, Jamie 1*, Lindsey 1*. Not bad.

8- Turnovers: Team 15; Jesse 2, Emily 2, Lindsey 3, Jamie 3, Lindy 5. I cannot remember a time that our turnovers were higher than our steals and assists added together. We have been averaging under 10. We need to focus on not trying to do things that we are not that good at, big girls in general need to give the ball up in the open court unless they have a clear easy path to the basket.

9- Opponent scoring: #3 Madison Mauck 8 pts 3fgs/2of2 FTs, #10 Jana Warren 5 pts 2fgs/ 1 of 2 fts, #23 Emily Riley 2pts 1fg/0 of 2fts, #5 Logan Beyer 2pts 1fg, #21 Holden Arthur 1 pt 1 of 2 fts, #11 Campbell Huddle 1pt 1 of 4 fts, #2 Emily Ruffalo 0 pts 0 of 4 fts, #4 Kayla King 0 pts 0 of 4 fts, #20 Teigh Beth Bailey 0 pts, 0 of 1 fts.

10- Scoring by Quarters: HA first; 0 to 5, 4 to 4, 12 to 4, 2 to 6.

Final Thoughts: A savvy player or a savvy team basically means a team or player that understands how to play in order to win the game. Such as being smart and not fouling a good foul shooter, recognizing a weakness in an opponents game and taking advange of it, knowing where your teams best chances are late in the game etc, etc, etc. We need to develop team savvy.

Savvy players or winning players also understand that you need to focus on what the coach says to try and do. Such as needing to foul if we have not stolen the ball by 30 seconds to go as we called for in the huddle, and to have someone foul that would not foul out. We lost time and we lost our most savvy player the player that would have been the one I would have gone to for the last shot. Girls you need to learn to listen and to think about what is said. As a team we need to develop some savvy, cleverness, game winning thinking. With One real savvy play down the stretch tonight and we probably win the game. We have lost two heartbreakers in a row by not playing with enough savvy down the stretch. There is no magic bullet, we have to just try to go back and get better in every phase of the game and hope we can make the plays next time.
As I said before these other teams want win just as bad as we do. We just need to take care of business.

Roy Williams says about coaching the highest highs are not as high as the lowest lows are low. These last 3 games have been rock bottom on the low list.

Practice tomorrow at 3:15pm.

Grades: Playing Hard: 95%, I cannot say everyone played hard all the time but for the most part we played hard almost all the time. Wouldn't you like to know what that extra 5% would have done to the results of the game. I know I would.

Playing Smart: Execution; 90% Somethings we did better like sideouts and Press offense. Somethings we did not do too good like busting our butts to follow instructions at the end of the game, going hard to the offensive glass and avoiding fouling them.

Playing Together: 98% I thought we played very unselfish, we made a couple of errors that might could be considered selfishness but I just think it was trying to make a play that was not there.

Thought: Hustle, Determination and Focus make up for many disadvantages in Basketball.
John Wooden, Hall of Fame UCLA Coach and winner of 11 National Championships. Girls this is what we have to go back to. We need a strong finish and we need to take this saying to heart, especially the part about focus and determination.

Coach May