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

Ugh. Well, at least we know the Scarlett Sizzlers won't be heading to the fifth grade national championships.

Or, maybe Assistant Coach Mike's advance info was really good and St Brendan is a juggernaut.

In any case the season started with a thud Thursday as St. Brendan pulled away to a 21-11 win in a lackluster season opener reminiscent of the Starrville Starrs' first two season-opening losses way back in December.

Many of the same problems were in evidence; our two main point guards, Phoebe and Grace, consistently dribbled into traps and turnovers near midcourt and in the corners.

It wasn't a blowout; it was only 8-2 at halftime and 16-6 at the end of three, but it was never in any doubt. St. Brendan had three players with 4 points each, so we didn't get demolished by one superstar player running wild. Pretty much nothing ever got going on offense.

Sis is especially, you might say "doubly," sensitive to charges of parental favoritism with her two identical twins on the team. So she has been hesitant to stick them into the roles of point guard/floor general, opting first to go with Phoebe and Grace, both of whom have shown aptitude to drive strongly to the basket.

But unfortunately Phoebe and Grace are pretty much black holes -- throw them the ball and you never see it again. "They're kinda ball hogs," said Sis B, who is turning into a little smart aleck (with a little diplomatic understatement).

Instead Twins A and B have been put mostly at the 2/3 wing positions, where at least in theory their defensive quickness should supply steals and fast break points.

Twin B, the 'more athletic' one, ran the offense in the fourth quarter for 6 of the 10 points. Twin A, from a wing position, got the best shots of anybody in the lineup and led the team with 4 points. She led the break four or five times and passed off for good layup chances (all missed, but they were good shots).

Assistant Coach Mike said what Sis probably needed to hear (from somebody other than me): "You really need to put both your twins at point guard."

This will be delicate to do without flaming off several other parents because Sis does not want to officially and blatantly "demote" Phoebe and Grace from PG-ball handling duties in favor of her two darlings, so it will have to be done in phases.

The other factor is the twins really play well together, especially on defense, so installing them as alternating PGs will kind of defeat that whole idea. With a 10-player roster and an equal-playing time philosophy, if Sis makes the twins her main PGs they literally will never play together. So some way to keep Phoebe and Grace playing PG on at least a part time basis has to be figured out.

The "default" 1-4 offense proved disastrous as we got absolutely slaughtered on the boards. That works in rec leagues with no-zone defense rules but in the Catholic League where zones are legal, people just pack the lane on you and you essentially have nobody to rebound. Since there is no 3-point shot, those wing players might as well be standing out in the hallway. That's going to be modified somewhat to a 1-2-2 for our next game to get some people down near the boards.

Polly, our Big Girl, did lead all rebounders with eight, but got badly winded near the end of her 12-minute playing stint. We'll have to use some of our ridiculous oversupply of time outs (five per game; Sis used one) to give her a breather when she is dragging.

Tomorrow morning we go to face St. Rudy in what might have been some colossal showdown but now looks like it could be a battle for the basement. Then we host St Miriam -- OMFG.

First things first. St. Rudy looked hopeless and helpless Tuesday while getting crushed by St. Miriam. They are beatable if we straighten some things out (get some rebounds, cut down turnovers).

St Miriam, not so much. At this point I'd be thrilled if we can keep it out of running-clock territory (20 in the second half). That will be an especially bad game to break anybody into a new role as point guard, so my recommendation to Sis will be to stay with Phoebe and Grace as main PGs until then. If they improve, maybe we can hang in the game. If they get picked clean, nobody much can argue with giving Sis A a shot at playing the point.

 

All right. Another day, another wild mood swing in Starrville area kids basketball.

The morning tipped off at 9 at St Sissy with Kurt's Krimsons taking on a mystery team from Wheatville St. Joshua, a hardy little farm town 40 miles up one of the main highways. My plan is to watch maybe half of this matchup, then scoot across town to archrival St Rudy in time for Sis's Scarlett Sizzlers against the hated Rudettes. After laying an egg in the season opener, and no practices in between, optimism is not running wild.

Sis, however, does have a few changes up her sleeve. After consultations with both me and other Assistant Coach Mike, she improvises a change to our 1-4 offense to a 1-2-2 set which will bring some offensive rebounders down near the basket (a glaring deficiency in the first game) and also does some lineup tweaking to insert Twin B into the rotation at point guard.

I settle in at St. Sissy, onto the aluminum bleachers where I've been parking my ample butt for 30-some years now, and watch as Kurt's Krimsons and the St. Joshua Trees wander out for warmup.

Ho, boy. St. Joshua would be a bottom-feeder in the city rec grade school league. They have six girls, wearing ill-fitting uniforms with baggy shorts sagging too low (requiring frequent re-tying) and too-tight t-shirts revealing three or four of the players to be, shall we say, "husky girls. "

NTTAWWT to be sure, since I was a "husky guy" myself in my grade school years, but the main thing I remember from my grade school days was getting frequently outrun up and down the court by most of my less-husky classmates. Now one of these "husky" girls seems to be dribbling OK and seems willing to take 15-20 foot jumpers in warmups, but the others are batting the ball around like a hockey puck. My first thought is a revelation in terms of the Sizzlers, "We can beat these guys," followed up a few seconds after watching some more of their warmups, "not only can we beat them, we should freaking kill them."

Then I glance down at the other end of the court where Kurt is huddling with his Krimsons, with their roster including The New Twins, the honest-to-god big-time AAU travel players, and his own daughter and niece, rec-league stars probably equal to Twin A and B ... and I shudder.

Kurt is probably having similar thoughts. The Catholic League has a number of rules designed to throttle back on mismatches and discourage RUTS: a no-press rule, a 10-point "defensive fallback" rule requiring defenses to retreat back inside the 3-point line any time you build a double-digit lead, a 20-point running clock rule in the second half, and a "game over" rule if you hit a 40 point margin.

With all that in mind, Kurt probably envisions a game barely making the third quarter. So he huddles his team for a brief confab, and as the game starts, the AAU twins are on the bench, some of his normal reserves are starting, and the Krimsons are packed back in a curiously timid zone. They start ice cold and the game goes three minutes without a score, although the Krimsons fire up a dozen shots or more.

Kurt runs in some subs, including Sarah, the semi-head case former Panda who was a bone of contention in the preseason tryout sessions and teammate of Twins A&B on the Starrville Starrs regional team, where she's been surprisingly good-natured and easy to get along with despite getting few shots in Coach Phil's bizarro world cryogenic offense. She seems determined to make up for that now, firing up eight shots in about three minutes, and finally banging one in.

St Joshua is helpless. The one "husky girl" is indeed their best player, she assumes Magic Johnson-style duties as power forward on defense and point guard on offense. She chucks up a few 18 footers, all of which slam off the rim. The Krimsons snag all the rebounds and continue their shooting fest on the offensive end, eventually rattling in a couple more and a 6-0 lead with a minute left in the quarter.

Kurt runs The New Twins in the game and it's Harlem Globetrotter time. They take turns effortlessly steaming down court, bolting past the befuddled St. Josh defenders, then flip each other no-look passes to each other for dipsy-doo reverse layups. In the final 20 seconds of the quarter, just to establish that they can do it, they steal the ball as easily as picking peppermint candy canes off the tree, bing-bang, and they're off on another break and the lead pumps out to 12-0.

That's enough for me. I pack up my shot chart, escape to the the parking lot and I'm off to St. Rudy's.

(I find out later the final is 44-4, although I'm told The New Twins played less than a quarter and Kurt really did try to hold things down, "but you can't tell your kids just to throw it out of bounds." As it turned out, both coaches mutually agreed to waive the running-clock and sudden-death rules; "we only have 8-10 games anyway, these girls want to play 24 minutes, they don't care if they are 40 points down" and played it out to the bitter end.)

Fifteen minutes or so later I roll into St Rudy's, scene of sports clashes dating back 50 years to when I was in grade school. Thanks to my early getaway from my "scouting" trip, I'm 30 minutes early and I arrive just as StarSis is pulling in with Twins A&B and first-grader Sis-7.

The game tips off and we await the fruits of Sis's strategic gambits. Not for long. At Coach Mike's urging, Sis installs Sis B as the main PG (although not starting due to playing time rotation requirements). Mike also urges Sis to use the twins in a rotation as the 'defensive points' assigned to the opposing PG.

Sis A in the starting lineup gets things going by stripping the opposing PG four straight times down, producing a couple of breakaway layups. Then Sis B enters at PG for us, she snaps up a passel of steals of her own, and the offense shifts into Technicolor. Sis B dishes off two certifiable fast-break assists and the newly modified 1-2-2 set starts opening up shots. We run off five more straight baskets and the first quarter ends 16-0 and suddenly we're into "fallback defense" terrain ourselves.

The Rudettes finally break the ice and we storm to halftime and a 22-6 lead. After the sluggish lethargy of Thursday, everybody is bubbly now. A few of the girls ask Sis, giggling, "can I play point guard too?" Four or five altogether.

Immediately the little man inside my head screams, "it ain't broken, you already fixed it once, so don't fix it again," but Sis says, "OK, why not?" I take a deep breath. She'll have to learn on her own. As the dutiful assistant, I bite my lip quietly and we move out for the second half.

Well, uhhhm, the second half is a snooze fest. With too much of a lead to be allowed to play high pressure defense, we're forced to sag back inside the 3-point line, so our supply of steals and breakaway layups is throttled off. We run in an assortment of people at point guard (including Sis A), most of whom take turns throwing the ball away and dribbling off their feet. St. Rudy doesn't have enough firepower to cut into the lead, but our offense has gone into a coma. We're shut out in the third quarter and the lead narrows to 22-10.

After a couple more minutes of futility in the third Sis shifts Sis B back to PG, the offense regains consciousness somewhat, and we re-break the ice. Sis B ends with six points and five assists, John Stockton/Isiah Thomas-level numbers in fifth grade. The game ends 28-15.

It's certainly a relief to win after the season-opening butt-kicking, but it's one of those games you have a mildly queasy feeling afterward.

Tuesday, when the Scarletts actually have a practice, Sis will have to shift into schoolmarm mode and deliver the lecture that while it can certainly be fun and games, that doesn't include just screwing around and point guard PT will not be determined on a mob-rule basis.

No rest for the weary today. Super Bowl morning the twins swing back into Starrville Regional League action for the 5-2 Starrville Starrs, winners of five straight, against a 5-1 opponent in a game for -- we think -- a share of second place in the division. The league tournament's in two weeks (when the Catholic League, Thank God, takes a week off). But due to the byzantine three-level tourney format, they'd probably be better off losing today; a win probably puts them in A Division against a bunch of 8-0 and 7-1 teams, while a loss would put them in B Division against teams with 5-3 and 4-4 records.

A Division probably carries more "prestige," if there is such a thing, but also a much higher chance of a quick 1-2 knockout by one of the league's real juggernauts, like the machine that smoked us in Game 2, or maybe, possibly worse, a lengthy road through the lower bracket in the double-elimination tourney.

B Division could hold a real chance to win some games, but not having to play another whole season's worth in two days. Four games in two days, a feasible schedule if you stay in the upper bracket, sounds about right. If you get bumped down, six or seven games is possible.

 

Well, the suspense didn't last long on Super Bowl Sunday as the Starrville Starrs came out and quite emphatically thumped previously-only once-beaten Great Prairie, 29-19 (after an early 12-2 lead) creating a three-way tie for second place in the division at 6-2. The top four teams in the division probably go to the Class A tournament weekend after next.

Great Prairie is the only team in the division to give undefeated DuPage a game, pushing them to a 22-19 decision in the only other game in the entire division to come down to a less-than-5 point margin (besides Starrville's one-point OT victory over Greenville).

The fact the Starrs pretty much smushed Great Prairie gives hope they might have a shot in a rematch against DuPage. If Coach Phil loosens up his ice-cube offense.

Back to Catholic League action tonight and tomorrow. Tonight it's a rare and much needed practice for the Scarlet Sizzlers, then tomorrow a game against fearsome St. Miriam.

 

I will give some of the highlights of my 2/3 of a season of being a commissioner/coach in the in-town middle school league.

As I mentioned above, the league is made up of 8 teams of 6th, 7th and 8th graders. The overall skill level is, to be charitable, mediocre. I gave every team 2 7th graders, 2 8th graders and the rest 6th graders. To try to split the talent evenly, I had the director tell me who the good 7th and 8th graders were and gave each of the 8 teams 2 of them and 2 lesser players. I then divided the 6th graders as best as I remembered by talent and height.

If you remember from 2 years ago, when my team won the title in the 4th-5th grade league, there was a terrible commish -- he screwed up the schedule, the rules, the results and the playoffs. The highlight was that the gym wasn't open for the championship game and the all-star game (which was his baby) had 5 head coaches and over 40 players for the 2 teams.

Fast forward 2 years and I sign up to be commissioner when there is a vacancy. Unbeknownst to me, the terrible commish had previously signed up for the job and the town basketball associated didn't want him. As a result, he was pissed off and went out of his way to undermine me. For example, when I gave the teams practice times so that they didn't have to start playing games without practices, he e-mailed all of the coaches and told them that they should cancel their practice slots to go to our HS's state championship football game (which started later in the day). When I sent an e-mails with the basic rules he told me that we should change nearly all of them.

Once I dealt with all of the parents who were upset that I didn't honor their requests, the season started OK and for the most part has been fine. However, here are some of the gems from the season:

-- One of the assistant coaches has been Facebook stalking a divorced mom of a player on his team. He is now an ex-coach.
-- Another coach seems to have an OCD issue and sends me texts as soon as the games are done for the day asking where his team is in the standings. His team is undefeated so I tell him that he's at worst tied for first. He wants to know when he has a 2 game lead so he can take a weekend off to go skiing with his family. He also sends repeated e-mails and texts that the playoffs have to be re-seeded after the first round (obviously because he wants to play the weakest team in the 2nd round).
-- We had a snowstorm one day which started about 40 minutes before the first game. The town didn't shut the gym, so I didn't cancel the games. I e-mailed the coaches that the games were on but that obviously safety first in terms of getting there. Now, there was maybe 2-3 inches total and there was little problem driving, but some kids didn't make it. Late that afternoon, I get a nasty call from a random parent telling me that my decision endangered her daughter and the rest of the girls. I politely explained that her daughter didn't need to attend if she didn't want to, but she wouldn't be satisfied and I eventually told her that if she continued to yell at me, I would hang up. Which I did. The next day, she sends an e-mail to the head of our town's basketball association, the boys and girls HS varsity coaches, every member of the board of ed and the mayor ripping into me.
-- The quality of the teams vary -- we have 2 really good teams, 3 average teams (including mine) and 3 teams which are struggling. The terrible former commish is the coach of one of the lesser teams, and in fairness, he doesn't have any good guards, which makes it hard. The two older players who were supposedly better are slightly below average, so they do struggle. He tells me after the first game (in which his team got crushed) that his players didn't have any fun and that he's recruited 2 new girls to play for his team. I tell him that given that most of the teams have 9 players (and one has 8) that I won't let him have more than 10 players, but he can choose 1 new player. He tells me that he will take 1 new player but he's going to the league about the other player. I don't hear any more about it, but he orders and picks up an 11th jersey (each team is issued 10). I ask why he needs an 11th jersey given he now has 10 players but he won't respond. I ask him again and he won't respond. At this point, I'm thinking that he's just going to have the second player play for his team without signing up. So I tell him that if he doesn't respond to me, he's not allowed to coach anymore. Needless to say, a less than amicable conversation ensues and it's fair to say that we won't be having him over anytime soon.
-- Of course, the next week, we have to play his team. My girls only had 6 players out of 9, but they were our best 6 and the game got out of control in the first half (24-2). He tells me at 2-0 that I shouldn't have my one tall player (who is nice but never played before) camp out near the basket to which I respond that if she's not being guarded, she has to be able to go to the hoop and look for a pass. I tell my girls midway through the 2nd quarter to back off and my best player only shoots outside shots the rest of the way. We end up winning something like 40-14 with my best player hitting a couple of 3s on about 5 attempts. Their coach walks off of the handshake line when it is time to shake my hand.
-- The next day, I'm in Starbucks with Mrs. W as part of our morning walk and a mother on that team starts screaming at me that we purposely gave the coach a bad team and that my players were taunting their team by shooting 3s. My wife (who has read all of the exchanges with the other coach) gets upset and starts back with the other parent. The other woman is escorted out of Starbucks by another parent.
-- During the games, I tend to keep up the chatter with my players and tell them to hustle and what they need to be doing on defense. The mom of one of my girls, who is my wife's best friend in town, has been telling people that her daughter doesn't like my negative energy. Now, I think that I've been a pretty good coach for 5 years. I sit down with each girl when they are on the bench and tell them what they are doing well and need to improve, always trying to end on a positive. However, I understand that each girl is different, and I've treated her with super kid gloves since. The strange part is that the mom hasn't said a word to me or my wife (who she hangs out with frequently). I know that one of us should raise the issue with her, but it's just strange. Meanwhile, we show up to a party a couple of weeks ago and some other dads in our social circle start calling me Bobby Knight when I walk in.
-- 5 more weeks in the regular season to go. Meanwhile, the former commish's team has won 2 in a row and is in 6th place.

 

Nice to see you weighing in, Webster, I was even getting tired of my own monologues.

As opposed to my usual endless droning, I'll enforce some brevity on myself here and throw in some one-paragraph reactions/comments.

Assuming the league's board of directors want you, and not him, as commissioner, I'd squash that shit in a hurry, which it sounds like you did.

Round-by-round reseeding is done at the behest of teevee networks to encourage, or make sure, that the best teams meet in the finals when teevee viewership theoretically is at its highest. I'd tell OCD Coach if you get a request from the teevee networks to do round by round reseeding, you'll get right on it.

I know I'm violating my one-paragraph rule here, but in an 8-team tournament, if he goes in as the 1-seed, the only difference any possible upset would make to him would be in the semifinals, (if 2 loses to 7) the No. 3 seed would face No. 7 and have a semi-easy game. Basically the whole argument comes down to he wants to play the No. 7 team in the semis instead of the 4/5 winner. Dude, if you are the juggernaut No. 1 seed, shouldn't you be kicking all these people's asses anyway regardless of seed?

Anybody involved in game scheduling knows that weather cancellations are a complete disaster, unless you have an open "weather date" built in the schedule. More often than not, even in frigid snowy states where they kind of plan for this stuff, canceling a whole day's slate of games effectively means they are canceled for good. When you're only playing 10 games or less per season it's not a trivial thing to piss one of them out the window. Rec-league directors/commisioners are well-advised to bow to the judgment of their facility managers and school officials; if they think it's still safe to travel the streets, I wouldn't overrule them.

A perfectly normal bell-curve type distribution.

At first glance the solution is totally obvious: tell the dude that you, as commissioner, must approve all new additions to the league. If anybody shows up for a game without being approved by the commish, they are ineligible to play. Period, the end. But ... If they were a bad team before, it's not too likely two new players (unless they are superstars) will instantly lift them to a title contender. But you can't allow late-season additions to simply join at will or else word will get around that if you really want to be on one particular team, just skip the preseason tryouts/team picking period, and then join as a late addition.

If you're in a league with 3PFGs, and you also have anti-RUTS rules (or a general agreement against it), you should probably tell your kids not to shoot 3s when you're up 20. As far as Former Commish's coaching advice, I'd say, "Coach your own team. You need to concentrate all your attentions on that."

Hmmm-mmmhm. Just walk away.

Throw a chair at 'em.

Uh, oh, watch out for more ringers!!

 

Starman, you looking for some new talent? You can give a big FU to Pres Fucko by bringing in some talent from overseas. Make sure you follow your state's laws though or else ...

Paterson school district suspends Eastside basketball coach

 

Yeah, that's a pretty incredible story although it has more to do with HS basketball than kids youth league.

I've also read/heard that stuff is more common (or maybe less unusual) in the Wild Wild West atmosphere of prep school superteams and shoe-company AAU juggernauts, in which a lot of cases, nobody's watching the gates of the hen house.

 

will probably take a few more years for it to happen on the middle school level, but would bet that it does happen. two or three decades ago how many high school games were televised nationally.

 

Interest in high school basketball is just going to go down and down as colleges pay less attention to HS play for recruiting.

And local fan followings for high school basketball will also slide as teams become less and less the local kids who've been playing around town since second grade, and more collections of AAU all stars whose street-agent coach made a deal with some car dealer on the school board.

 

speaking for only myself, i watch a few hs games a season. pretty much the games my buddies coach. work with a guy who refs a lot of good teams, top teams in NJ who are ranked nationally, and will maybe catch one game he refs.

not really sure how much the interest in hs basketball is declining. don't have any ratings to site, but do know there are more hs games on espn3, msg, sny (Ny-NJ area) than there were a couple decades ago. there were pretty much no games televised then, aside from local cable.

 

Doesn't it vary by location? High school basketball is still a big deal in parts of Kentucky.

 

Definitely still popular in many states. in some parts of PA and Iowa, Okla, hs wrestling is a bigger deal than basketball. some places hs hockey is more popular.
In NJ and NYC, hs basketball is still very popular. Seems every weekend there's a game that's on regional cable or played in a neutral site bigger venue between top teams.