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

Three minutes in: 12-0.
Halftime: 18-3.
Third quarter: 24-3.
Final: 28-9, with the Koalas running off a 6-0 surge in the final two minutes.

Nearly as we could tell, the big strategic bombshell was some kind of weird double-screen play, which turned out to be a double moving- screen play; they put two players in front of their PG like the old Green Bay Packer sweep.

Sis said, "I would have bitched about the illegal picks, but they were never scoring anyway."

The post game handshake line was "a little weird," Sis said. Kerri almost skipped it altogether until some Sqiurrelly Girly players lined up for handshakes.

 

There's some kind of weird dynamic going on with the Koalas; another player dad has assumed duties as co-coach along with Kerri. They are running some kind of good cop-bad cop routine on the sideline. The new dad-coach shaves his head; he looks like Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil. He barks a lot of orders on the sideline and stomps his feet when things go bad.

Sis said the new guy, Kurt, had been at one or two previous of the "joint practices," but in an assistant role only; he chased down loose balls for layup lines, etc. But yesterday, he seemed to be pretty much running the show.

Apparently the "mystery practice"' Friday was mainly devoted to Kurt installing his new game plan.

One huge difference was that Kerri's daughter, Sarah, who previously had been taking almost all the shots for the Koalas, suddenly turned into a passer yesterday; she didn't even get a shot until the second half and only scored in the final two minutes.

Kurt didn't go through the post game handshakes at all; he and his daughter pretty much bolted straight for the parking lot at the end of the game.

 

Sounds like it is time for some social media shaming! Next time, video the lack of a handshake line.

 

Oh, I am sure there will be some snippy repartee in the halls of St Sissy tomorrow. Fourth grade payback is hell.

 

Sis B, who is definitely the most competitive and "snappiest" of the Squirrellies, said there indeed were a few snappy exchanges in class Monday.

The highlight was former Pandas teammate Sarah saying, "We knew everything you guys were going to do. We knew all your plays. We were ready for anything."

Sis B picked up the loose ball and slammed it home: "We were ahead 28-3 midway in the fourth quarter. Were you ready for that?"

Nasty.

 

DaughterQuant's doing the club volleyball thing again this year, and it will be interesting to see how the snippy-ness goes. Her club was going to field one so-called "Elite" team* at her age level, but there were enough girls who wanted to try that level that a very late decision was made to field two (Mo teams, mo money). It seems that DaughterQuant's team is, ostensibly, the lesser of the two, but we shall see. Two of the girls on the ostensibly better team were on the one-level-up team last year (one of those was on DaughterQuant's school team this fall), and DaughterQuant's team actually finished the season ranked higher. Will be interesting how those girls respond if DaughterQuant's team has a better season.


*I should note that there are two levels above elite at this club.

 

Elite, Ultra-Elite and Mega-Elite?

I'll try to dig up the club volleyball thread and keep volleyball over there, but the season is off to a shaky start for the Metro Starrville Spikers featuring Sis-14, who has quit all other sports to concentrate on volleyball.
First off the club has assigned 12 players per squad, so PT is already a big problem. In the first tournament last weekend, she played about one-third if the games.
Court experience aka PT is the main reason you play club ball; if the PT situation doesn't improve fast, Sis may pull the plug and Sis-14 may pull her softball glove out of mothballs.

 

It goes "Regional," then "Elite", then "National," then simply "Black/Red". Last year was the same except for the top group, which was called "Smack."

 

Yeah, Sis-14's bunch has the same thing: Regional-Elite-National. She's on the middle of three levels.

 

Back to hoops: the Squirrelly Girlies have now played 3 of the other 5 teams in the league (they will play return games with all 3).

Of the two remaining games with "fresh" opponents, we know one (Saturday's foe the "Yellows") is just awful. Next week's opponent the "Reds" played an OT game with Kerri's Koalas in the season opener, so we figure they're roughly comparable teams. They still have the big bruising center from last year but she hasn't been dominating as much this season.

Actually all three teams the SGs have played have had at least one big beefy center, but none have done any damage; no opposing player has scored more than 6 in any game.

StarSis's main challenge so far has been spreading shots around so that all 7 players on the roster stay happy.

Unlike last season when it took most of the season to get everybody in the scorebook, this year it took only two games.

 

Turns out that in addition to playing with the Squirrelly Girlies, Sophie is playing on one of the area's top travel teams.
After the SG game yesterday morning, Sophie had 2 more games set for the afternoon / evening and up to 3 more today (Sunday). So Sophie's dad told StarSis it was OK if she rested Sophie an extra half-quarter or so to even up PT if necessary.
No need to worry. Against the Yellows, a hulking ponderous team from a neighboring suburban town, Sophie scored 10 points in the first 90 seconds of the game.
At the first sub-break, Sis pulled out Sophie and Grace, the two top scorers, and suddenly the Yellows made a completely unlikely run, getting baskets from their trio of 5-foot centers to close the first quarter margin to 12-8.
The problem was, their guards were a complete disaster, and for nearly two whole quarters, they never even got a shot off -- never got the ball into the paint.
Even though Sis told Sophie to quit stealing the ball directly from the dribblers, the Yellows insisted on throwing the ball straight into the laps of Squirrely Girl defenders and it was off to the races again. A 20-0 run in the middle two quarters led the way to trading baskets in the fourth for the 38-14 final.
The Yellows were actually happy; they set their season high for scoring. (The 14 points given up by the SGs was also a season high, but Sis wasn't worried: "the whole fourth quarter was just garbage time.") All 7 SGs who played scored.
After the game, Sophie and her travel coach invited Grace and Sis A and B to come watch their afternoon games, along with StarSis as a chaperone.
"Everybody was very very friendly," StarSis reported.

 

A few interesting tidbits from the weekend:
As StarSis reported on Saturday, the coaches and organizers of the travel team were VERY friendly when StarSis, the two twins and teammate Grace came to visit.

Everybody had lunch with the team, Sophie acting as social director, in between games, and the 3 girls were allowed to shoot around in their between game "practice" and sit behind their bench during the games.

It wasn't a high intensity tryout or anything, but Sis reported all 3 girls looked perfectly comfortable shooting with the rest of the team.

Sis also said she was told that TravelTeam has been keeping their eyes on the Squirreley Girls/Pandas for most of the last two seasons anyway and "tryouts" would likely be a formality.

Everybody left with TravelTeam tee-shirts, including StarSis, who also got a hat and a coaches' clipboard (and whistle!! Woohoo!) Sitting with a couple of the TravelTeam main organizers/coaches, Sis definitely got the impression she was being courted as a coach, too -- losts of offhanded 'what would you do here' coach-speak questions.

Despite that rather obvious attempt to woo them with goodies and swag, Sis is still playing it close to the vest about what they're going to do next year.

They're going to play (and StarSis is probably going to coach) 12-16 games for the St. Sissy school team, and they want to do SOME kind of additional basketball, but the choice may boil down to a relatively low-key 8-10 game schedule in the city rec league, or a big-time 30-game traveling-team schedule.

On one hand, Sis says, she might prefer just to stick with the city rec league: everybody lives within two miles of the games, the schedules are manageable and consistent, and the financial burden is pretty low.

But OTOH staying with the rec league is probably only an option if something happens to boost the overall level of play. The Squirrelly Girlies, the only all-4th grade team in the 4th/5th combo league, haven't had a game closer than 19 points, despite Sis using 3/4 of almost every game to set up shots for her "bottom" 2-3 players.

If everything remained the same next year except the SGs were the only all-5th grade team in the league, they'd be winning games 52-6 instead of 38-14. Even if Sophie got reassigned to another team (which she and parents do not want) , that would make SOME difference, but probably not much ... except for whatever lucky team got her.

So staying put in the rec league may not really work for anybody involved.

Sis asked the league supervisor if he is aware of any secret stash of dynamite Starrville 5th grade players on some other travel teams, and he said no: as far as he knows there are only 4-6 city girls playing travel team, and Sophie is one of them. There were a bunch of bigger girls in the league 2 years ago when this bunch was all 2nd graders in the 2nd/3rd league, but apparently most of them have moved on to other stuff (like travel soccer, which is huge in the area).

Oh yes -- Sis reported that Rudette (from last spring's legendary showdown) called today to just vaguely gab about kids basketball. It seems her team is doing pretty well in their rec league, if you can imagine that. Undoubtedly more to come on that front.