yes, another kids coaching story (Update: 2016-17 edition)

Checking in: yesterday afternoon Sis rang up and said, 'what are you doing tonight and tomorrow?'

STARMAN: Well, I can tell you anything that you need to know.

SIS: No, you don't understand. I want you to be my assistant.
I want you to come to the practices and sit on the bench during the game.

STARMAN: Me? You want me?

SIS: What do you say? Under the following conditions. That you, uh... clean yourself up and, uh... you shave.
You show up at the game on time, and practice, and wear a shirt and tie.

STARMAN: I got myself a suit, right here. I got a wingdinger. I was married in that suit.

SIS: And that you're sober.

STARMAN: Oh, no.

SIS: You can't drink in front of these girls. If I smell even a trace of liquor on your breath, you'll be finished.



Well, we traded off the suit and tie stuff for my agreeing not to show up drunk for the 8 a.m. Saturday game. I reminded her that I do actually shave and shower fairly regularly so she took my word for the rest of it.

So I was officially on board for last night's full 90-minute practice and today's 55-minute walk-through.

Rather than march into practice and impress the girls and everybody by starting to bark out orders Bobby Knight style, I confined most of my input to writing up a sheet of notes on things I think we needed to cover and letting Sis do most of the order-barking. (She doesn't bark usually anyway.)

Amazingly enough most of the things on my list were on hers too.

I said we needed to make a few assumptions:

1) As noted in an earlier post, since 'Rudette' is coaching her two daughters, who are guards, it's fairly safe to assume their game plan revolves around them to a fairly major extent.

2) It's probably safe to assume they do have at least one pretty good F/C low-post player. In any case we better plan for the assumption that they do and work on doubling the low post as well as instructing our post players in how to plant themselves, bump bodies, and defend the 'back-down.'

3) 'Rudette' did not ask/demand that pressing be allowed in this game just for the hell of it (her league allows pressing for the whole 4th quarter; the Starville Youth League does not allow it at all; we compromised by allowing it the final two minutes of each half). There must be a reason she wanted it in. Therefore we had better practice at least a basic press-break -- and since pressing is a big strength of our team too, we better practice to use it as a weapon ourselves.

4) Although we will not be using the equal-playing-time rules of either league, we will still use every player on our team equally within 2-4 minutes of each other. While we will use squad substitution in the first half to get everybody in equally, in the second half we will go to constant hockey-style rotation focusing on getting our 'best' lineup on the floor the final 4 minutes of the game.

5) In the entire 8-game league season, we had a total of 16 team fouls. Opponents were 5-17 against us from the FT line all season. While we will not tell players to go out and hack it up, one or two fouls against any one player is no need for panic.

6) The game is going to seem (and actually be) much longer than any of the others. The previous games have been 6-minute quarters with running time until the final 60 seconds of each period. This game will be officially-timed 6-minute quarters so by the end of the game, fatigue may actually become significant (with a small and fast team, we WANT it to).

7) This is a "real game" with real refs and a running scoreboard and everything, and we are trying to win, but it isn't the end of the world if we don't. What sucked about the game last week was losing because we weren't ready. If we lose this one it won't be because we weren't ready.

So between yesterday and today, we covered pretty much all of that stuff and a couple other things too. Now all Sis has to worry about is her blood-curdling pregame locker-room speech.

 

Have you ever spotted a group of guys betting on these games? I just have this picture in my head of guys with some cash in their hands placing bets during the course of your games.

 

We show up at 7:55 for the 8:00 finals and see a group of players and parents waiting outside. The school is locked. After a series of phone calls and texts, we learn that the school custodian said he was told that the games were on Sunday, not Saturday. By the time that we learned that someone was possibly coming, we decided to postpone the game because the next game was almost scheduled to start. Hopefully next Saturday.

The school was open in time for the all star game. Teams overselected so it was rosters of 15 and 14.

 

Well, the morning began at 6:30 with the smell of coffee and pancakes, and it ended some 16 hours later with the last bite of a cheesy Chuck E. Cheese pizza.

I woke up in my old bedroom in the StarSis household, with BILSis already packing the vans and getting everybody dressed. A 5-minute consciousness-restoring shower later, I was into my sporty warmup suit and I was off to the familiar old doorways of St. Sissy School.
Sis, the twins, team water-girl Sis-5 and I all arrived at 7:35 for the 8:15 game, with SisSon-16 and Sis-14 set to arrive at game time (teenagers seem allergic to getting up at 6:30). At the school, the janitor let us in and we all pitched in on the process of lowering the main-gym rims to 9 feet for the upcoming Showdown. At about 7:50, coaches, players and parents of both teams begin filtering in through the doors.
At 8 sharp, Sis and I begin trading worried glances. Something ain't right. Sophie, one of our two "outside school" players (i.e. public-school student and NOT a St. Sissy student) and debatably our best player (the 'fireball' on defense and breakaway layups) is nowhere to be seen.
Sophie's mother had been the lone firm "no" when the whole idea of the game was floated last week, and supposedly she remained pretty dubious for a day or so, but by Monday night when the go-no go decision was made, both she and Sophie were supposedly firmly on board for the game.
And Sophie did show up for all three of the practices, so we figured she was really going to show up. But anyway we assumed she would be there and made our plans with that assumption in mind. Although she seemed a bit hesitant and standoffish through most of the practices, answering yes-no to questions and rarely talking or joking to the rest of the team.
That wasn't all that unusual either; Sophie seemed to be a bit of a lone wolf anyway, she didn't mix much with most of the St. Sissy girls. Sis-B, the unofficial 'captain' of the team, had taken it upon herself to try to pull her in, inviting her to a mid-season sleepover party, but part of it was coolness on the part of Sophie herself.
Anyway, it got to be 8:00, and Sis said, "I'm making a call, either she shows up or doesn't," fired off a quick call and text message, and began filling out the starting lineup without Sophie in it.
At 8:05, we all retire to the small classroom next to the gym serving as the "home locker room," and Sis launches into her pregame speech.
Sis delivers a nice little talk about team unity, how this team had come together for the first time back in November, how they worked and played for almost four months, so let's make it a good morning to remember.
And, at 8:11, Sophie comes walking through the classroom door. She's tight-lipped without a word to anybody. Sis simply continues with business as usual.
While all the off-court confusion had been building, I had gone out to take a brief gander at the "Rudettes" shooting warmups on the court outside. Immediately I was taken agast; they appeared to have THREE monstrously huge players. But after a few seconds it became clear these were older sisters of some of the "Rudette" players, who apparenly felt free to shoot around with the team during warmups. It soon developed that their younger sisters, while still pretty decent-sized 2nd-3rd grade players themselves, were not 5-foot-plus Shaqadelic clones.
Sis had already listed a unit with Sis-A and Sis-B as the starting guards, with Sophie and her group set to come in at the 4:00 mark. With everything apparently straightened out, we line up for the starting tip.
As an additional intimidation factor, our whole team was wearing black hairbands and wristbands in addition to our regular black uniforms.
At center, the Rudettes did have one 5-footer but she was very slim and trim, not a tree-trunk type like "Susie" who had demolished us last week. As we guessed, they did start Coach Rudette's two daughters, 2nd-grade Ruda and 3rd-grade Rudee, at the guards, and they were pretty good (Ruda especially for her age) but basically it's a standoff with the Panda twins. Their tall center does throw in a hook shot and the Rudettes go up 2-0.
We do invoke our doubling-down plan on defense, where the forward drops down to doubleteam the center, and it works as we quickly come up with a steal.
Sis-B passes down to Sarah for a short jumper in the key but the Rudette center skies high to smack the shot back in her face. Ruda breaks off for a layup and we're down 4-0.
Sis-A cuts around a pick and fires up a missed layup and Allison crashes the glass from the other side and the Pandas are on the board. At the next buzzer Sophie enters the game and the teams trade baskets the rest of the quarter, which ends with the Rudettes holding a 10-6 lead. Amazingly, our deadeye sharpshooter Grace banks one in off the board with her heels on the 3-point line and Sis says, "damn, we should have agreed to the 3-point shot."
The second quarter carries on in a basket-trading mode, but Sophie remains in a funk; playing listlessly, with little burst, making several costly turnovers and missing a few layups. With 2:14 left in the half, trailing 16-12, Sis calls a time out and tells the team, "OK, when it gets below 2:00 in the quarter, pressing is legal, so you can bet they're probably going to go into a press." She quickly reviews our pressbreak plan, basically a variation of our trademark "Lineup'' inbounds play.
Everybody nods their heads, and next time down the court, indeed St. Sissy breaks into a fullcourt man press. Sophie was supposed to RECEIVE the inbounds pass, but instead she grabs the ball to pass it in herself, upon which it's quickly stolen and cashed in for a layup. Sis quickly points out the correct formation, but this time Sophie has it stripped clean herself, and now it's 20-12.
Sis B retreats under the basket to take the inbounds pass herself and motors it up past halfcourt to break the press, but we're still in disarray. A pass back to Sophie is picked off clean by Ruda and Sophie goes down hard on the court trying to block the layup, dropping the Pandas a neat 10 points down, 22-12, with 35 seconds left in the half, and suddenly Sophie announces, "I think I'm going to throw up," and sprints off court into the bathroom.
Another Panda shot or two rattles off the rim in the final seconds and that's the halftime margin, and we head to the locker rooms for the intermission.

 

In the classroom at halftime, it's immediately obvious Sophie is still in the bathroom. "I'll go get her," says Sis B, who sprints out of the room.
The next couple of minutes, Sis runs over a few 'basic-fundamental' things like "don't panic, stay cool, etc etc," when suddenly the door swings open with Sis-B leading a weeping Sophie in her arms.
"I just hate this is the last game for this team," Sophie says through the sniffles. "I know you guys go to school here and I go to Starville Middle and we're probably never going to be on the same team again. I didn't even know if I wanted to be here at all today and now I'm playing so bad," before dissolving again into full-scale wailing.
Sis cancels the rest of her halftime talk -- as the team gathers around Sophie in a sobbing group hug.
"You're right, Sophie, this is probably the last time THIS team will ever be together. Maybe we'll all mostly be on the same team next year, but maybe not. And no, you probably won't go to St. Sissy school either. But no matter what happens, we'll all remember what happened with this team today. And this team is what it is because of 10 people -- everybody in here -- playing their best. "
Suddenly there's a knock on the door, it's the scorekeeper: "Sorry to put you in a rush but it's 1:00 until the third quarter starts." The off-court drama had burned up most of the halftime, so we have to scramble back out to get on the floor.
The third quarter opens and the Rudettes hold onto their 10-point lead, reaching the final minute of the quarter at 30-20. Grace drains a couple more 14-footers and Sarah holds her own under the glass with the Rudettes' big center. Sophie reenters the game midway in the quarter and immediately picks off a couple of quick steals, prompting a quick time-out by coach Rudette.
Sophie is more upbeat and energetic, but now she's pressing, stewing about missing the layups after the steals. "Don't worry about that, they'll start dropping," Sis reassures her. And in the final seconds of the quarter, Sophie finally converts two steal-layups and the margin narrows to 30-24.
Rudette opens the fourth quarter by pounding it down low to the tall center; she cans another hook shot, but then Panda forwards start peeling the ball loose when she dribbles in the lane. Late-season addition Elena makes a couple of good defensive plays coming up with key steals.
Rudette delegates main ballhandling duties to Ruda, the second grader, and Sis A, our best defender, swiches onto her, body-bumping her roughly on successive trips down the court. The foul calls mean nothing but suddenly Ruda starts getting gun-shy, pushing the ball off hot-potato style to older sister Rudee, who begins developing ballhog tendencies, firing up dubious 12-foot jumpers from the wing.
It's 34-26 with three minutes left when Sis makes her final substitution moves, reinserting Sophie, Sarah and Grace along with the two twins, and now the Pandas shift into full-pressure overdrive. Still required to wait at halfcourt, the twins pull off their favorite long-switching crisscross moves on the Rudette sisters at midcourt, and four passes in a row fly wildly into Panda hands. Grace and Sis A convert on layups and Sarah storms down the lane to bank in a putback, and now it's 34-32 as Coach Rudette calls a frantic time-out at 1:56.
Suddenly we also realized: the gym was freaking packed! The game was being played as a preliminary game to the previously-scheduled CYL game between the 8th grade teams of both St. Sissy and St. Rudy's, featuring older sisters of many players on both teams. From about halftime of our game, the stands had been continually filling up and now were almost completely jammed.
Sis enters the huddle with a grin on her face. "This is it, girls," she says with a laugh. "This is what we've been waiting all year to do, but never been able to. Full-court press. Full pressure. Deny every pass. Two more minutes and we bring it home."
In our fullcourt "Black" press, we have the center, Sarah, guarding the inbounds passer, and she successfully flusters the Rudettes into several wobbly inbounds, which are quickly snapped up by Sophie, the twins, and Grace. Within seconds we've tied it at 34 and forced a couple more turnovers, although our shots rim off. Finally we deflect a pass out of bounds on the sideline and the Rudies get a throw-in on the side and break Rudee loose for a layup to go back ahead 36-34.
Grace takes a (OMFG) 20-footer which rims in and out, drops off into the hands of their big center, who flips it off to Rudee, who is tied up by Sis B, for our fifth team foul, putting them into the 1-and-1.
Rudee swishes the first and bangs the second off the rim, and the Rudettes lead 37-34 with 44 seconds to play.
The ball is booted out of bounds under the basket and the Pandas get a throw-in, and Sis-B signals out the legendary "Lineup" play. Sarah comes storming around the triple-screen wall, puts up a chip-shot layup, and misses, but Sophie grabs the rebound and throws it in high off the glass. 37-36.
With 18 seconds left, Coach Rudette calls her final time-out, but in the worst possible place: they must now inbound the ball under their own basket, and Ruda throws it straight into a cluster of bodies under her own basket.
The ball bounces loose, and Grace, drifting free at the foul line extended, picks it up, loads up, and fires up a classic Larry Bird-high-arching jumper which drills through with 14 seconds left for a 38-37 lead and the clock running as the crowd rattles the gym windows.
With 9 seconds left, Coach Rudette signals for time-out, which the refs grant. Immediately it's confirmed at the scorer's table the Rudettes had no time-outs left, so dutifully a technical is called.
The ref comes to Sis with a rather curious question: "Do you really want to shoot the technical?"
Uhmm, well, let's see, a 1-point lead with :09 to go. "Uh, yes, I think so," Sis says, with a quizzical look.
At first, Sis designates Sis-B to shoot it, but she quickly tells her mom, "Have Sophie shoot it."
She nails both for a 40-37 lead and Sis directs the twins to play keep-away to stall off the final nine seconds. Sis-B dribbles in a circle as the buzzer sounds and the crowd erupts out of the stands.
The Rudettes seemed pretty crushed after the game but by halftime had agreed to the afternoon pizza pig-out at Chuck E. Cheese. They hung around a couple hours in fairly good humor but by evening it had mainly turned into a Panda party.
Checking the stat sheets afterward, we see Sis's prediction had been pretty close: the Rudettes' big center had 14 points and 12 rebounds, while Rudee had 13 points and Ruda 8. For the Pandas Grace had 12, Sophie 10, Sarah 8 and the twins 4 each.
Although "Rudette" had seemingly been hot on the idea of more than one game, there was no discussion of any such option afterward. At the pizza party, Sis said, "I think we've probably had enough."

 

We've been very careful to keep our eyes on the Vegas odds for any suspicious last-minute action on the spread.

 

It's never over until it's ... over?

Sis said she got a gabby call from "Rudette" at her office Monday afternoon just to yack about the game.

After the obligatory "great game, you guys played great," etc etc., Sis said, Rudette started to tiptoe into, "We talked about maybe playing two-out-of-three?"

Sis said she had to seriously restrain herself from throwing the phone across the room.

Without using the phrase, "you must be out of your goddamn mind," Sis managed to convey the idea, "The team is really tired, I think they've had enough."

Rudette backs off and tries another angle. "Maybe we could try a game between only St. Rudy and St. Sissy players" -- a veiled shot at the fact one of the Pandas' best players was Sophie, the public-school flash who scored 10 Saturday.

Of course all the halftime soap opera revolved around the fact Sophie already felt left out by the St. Sissy players, although Sis as coach has been very adamant about making no such distinction.

At that point, Sis said, she got a little abrupt with Rudette. She rang off with a vague promise to "get back to you in a week or two." (By which time everybody will be thinking about spring break and anything besides basketball.)

See ya next year.

 

Great googly-moogly, I read every word of this thread.

Hell, now I'm tired, too.

Great work, Starman.

 

Starman, I have my final game tomorrow night. Say the word, and I'll fly you to NJ to be my assistant. Mrs. W has bought basketball keychains for the girls and another parent is bringing cupcakes.

 

That was freaking awesome and why I love sports. I have a girl in grade 2 so the half time dramatics are not anything that surprises me. Great that she iced the free throws, I feel happy for Sophie.

 

(Drunkenly stumbles onto the court) AAARRRRHH ARRRHHH GET THAT BOZO SOME GLASSES!!! Webster... his feet were set!!

 

"Alright, we're gonna run Sophie on the picket fence. Now girls, don't get caught watching the paint dry."

And I also read every word of that epic. Nice job, Starman. Were you taking notes during the game?