PAA 13U League, Kilauea gym
Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2015
Thunder Pups 43, Sharks-Blue 41
H1 Thunder 'Pup Squad': fg 17-36 (.472) (3-pt 3-13 .231), ft 6-8 (.750), reb 26 (7 off), ast 10, to 20, stl 11, blk 4.
Sharks-Blue fg 15-47 (.319) (3-pt 7-20 .350), ft 4-7 (.571), reb 19 (9 off), ast 13, to 14, stl 15, blk 1.
Individual
Micah fg 7-13 (3-pt) 2-6), reb 4, ast 5, to 8, stl 3, pts 16
Josh R fg 1-3, ft 1-1, reb 4 (1 off), ast 2, to 3, stl 4, pts 3
Trinity fg 2-2, ft 2-3, reb 2 (2 off), to 3, pts 6
Chaz fg 0-2 (3-pt 0-2), pts 0
Jance fg 1-4, reb 5 (2 off), stl 1, pts 2
Jhevin fg 0-0, pts 0
Jonah fg 5-7 (3-pt 0-1, ft 3-4, reb 3 (2), ast 1, to 3, stl 1, blk 1, pts 13
Walter fg 0-0, pts 0
THE GOOD
>> Shot selection. I like the quality of the shots we took most of the time. We got a lot of good, open looks for easy layups and open threes. Having good shot selection doesn't necessarily mean we walk it up real slow. We will always push the ball and look for transition shots, especially open threes. But it's even more important that the shots be quality shots, not rushed, not in traffic. We got good ball movement most of the time.
>> Rebounding. Not bad. We outrebounded Sharks-Blue 26-19, but we still gave up a lot of offensive boards. Boxing out. We still haven't done it consistently, but this was a good step forward.
>> Free throws. We didn't take a lot of FTs, but we were 6-for-8, which is our best so far in PAA League.
>> Great start. We jumped to a 14-5 lead mostly off steals. Jonah was great on the front of our press, distracting passers and causing problems for the other team. He had one steal, but was directly responsible for several other ones because of his energy and the way his long arms
THE BAD
>> Defensive positioning. Our Sonic defense means our bottom man has to get out to the corner EVERY TIME. But we were tired, guys didn't get out there, and Sharks-Blue hit five 3-pointers, almost all from the corners, in the last 10 minutes to stay in the game. If we defend properly, we win by 10 or 15 instead.
>> Conditioning. Our lack of good positioning on defense is directly tied to our conditioning, so we did a lot of work there today (Thursday) at practice.
>> Turnovers. We had 20 turnovers, by far the worst we've done in a long time. We had a lot of mental errors against their press, simply from not looking at our target areas after the first pass in on our pressbreaker. HOWEVER, in the final 2 or 3 minutes, we broke their press every single time and got layups. A few times, it was off dribbling through the press, but most times it was from looking upcourt and feeding our teammates for easy layups. That showed a lot. We really matured as the game went along and broke the press easily, just like we should have from the first time they used it. We're learning.
Overall, a clutch performance by everyone. Micah scored 16 points, but also had to hold down the backcourt as the point guard against double teams. Josh, Trinity and Jonah had big baskets down the stretch when we broke the press.
I don't know if this means we're a good team yet. I just know it was a ragged, wild game and our guys kept their heads. That's a big step forward :)
