A+ for effort

Great effort. Great hustle. No complaints today from me. I know we didn't play perfect basketball, and though we lost all three games (13U, 15U, 17U), there are a lot of bright spots so I feel pretty good.

For the 15U in the loss, it came down to making smart decisions. We didn't make enough. That hurt us. We played good enough to win, but against a good team like the Blue Devils II, they will make you pay if you don't take care of the ball, and we didn't some of the time. I still think Tani had position and the referee should've called a charge in that final minute, but one call is not why we lost. We've just got to play smarter against older teams.

The 13U played valiantly against Boom, but with just 5 players (and Walter, who is 10), we ran out of gas. Boom is deep, and they play well together. If we'd had two or three more players, we could've press all game, and as you guys saw, Boom had major problems with our press when we were fresh.

17U gave the Storm a tough battle. We cut it to 9 in the second half and the starters were gassed after making a great run off our press, hitting 3s. So I put in a whole new group to give the starters a quick rest (and save a time out), but within seconds, the lead went back to 15 after we turned it over a few times and gave their best shooter a wide-open 3.

Their coach, Tim Harrison, has been around a long time, used to coach at Radford and Kailua. His son is one of their best shooters (#21). He's seen our 13U and our older teams. He said afterward that we remind him of the Storm team when they were younger. That's a good sign.

The purpose of the Pippen defense is to take that 3 away, and we did a solid job with that most of the game ... until that moment. By the time our starters got back in, we had to burn a time out anyway. It was disappointing that our bench didn't play smart, but again, we're learning. We're young. The Storm is a seasoned team, a lot of experience and older than us. They've played together for years, so just getting in striking distance late in the game was gratifying. We didn't lie down and give up, so I'm proud of our 17U.

BIG MAHALO to Coach Roy for transporting the 13U boys. BIG MAHALO to Dora and Roland Ogoshi for bringing ice-cold drinks and corn dogs for the team.