They stretched the lead to about 15 before we started to chip away. We hit a bunch of threes before the half and got within 6. Then we threw the ball away on an inbounds pass and they scored to go up 8 at halftime.
We fought hard against a tall, athletic team, an older group of guys and never gave up. We were within 8-10 points for most of the second half. The Open Court coaches know our guys well; most of our lineup today was from our 13U and 15U rosters. OC played a lot of their subs and that's when we made our runs.
Our guys played with heart. There are details to work on, like boxing out (they got too many second, third, fourth shots) and being a little bit smarter with the ball on penetration against a tall team. When we beat them last year, we shot well from the 3-point line. Tonight, not bad. Haka was on fire from deep late in the first half and into the second half. But the hustle on defense of Haka and everybody else that kept us within striking distance.
I'm going to be hard on our guys from time to time, but not because we lack heart. It's only because I know we can beat any of these teams in the varsity leagues, even with our young guys, if we take care of the details. That takes time. And patience. But we are really, really close.
Thunder varsity (17U) back at St. Francis in the morning, 10:00 am game against the host team. 15U (13U) has a 10:40 am game at McCully. I'm picking up guys in Kalihi (Coach Roy has church in the morning). We've got a super busy and fun June ahead. Choke games.
WE LUB THIS GAME!
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