Tourney Time

As a basketball player, fan, and coach, there is nothing better than tournament time!  The regular season is great, but teams can make or break their season based on what happens in the tournament.  Emmanuel is a great example of that last year in our conference tournament.  They played well in the tournament and made it to the conference tournament finals which earned them an automatic birth into the National Tournament.

Every team that makes it to the tournament starts fresh.  Records are 0-0.  It's win and advance or lose and go home.  Ball till you fall.  

Tonight Will played a good game and scored a career high 24 for us to help us advance pass Emmanuel and into the semi-finals vs. Lee tomorrow at 6.  The other great thing about the tournament is that when you win you don't get much time to celebrate.  There is always another game to prepare for. 

Shout out to our women's team who won by 1 point to also advance to the semi-finals where they will face Southern-Poly at 4 tomorrow.

Old School Basketball

I got an email from a coach the other day and in it there was a section that talked about Keeping it Real: Old School Basketball Values.  It was written by Herb Welling from Omaha Central High School.  I liked it and thought I'd share it with you.  

We value the ball

We take good shots

We share the ball and we make the extra pass

We sprint back on defense and we give up no lay-ups

We defend the ball and we help our teammate guarding the ball

We contests shots and we don't foul

We box out

We rebound and we run the floor

We dive for loose balls

We take charges

We respect the game, officials, coaches, opponents, and more importantly our teammates

We have good body language

We compete hard and we play with passion

We have no excuses and we have "next play" mentality

We listen with eyes and ears

We only care about one stat and that is the final score

We are responsible and accountable to the team on and off the floor

We play as a team