Sunday, May 3, 2009

Run N Slam

The Annual Spiece event took place this weekend in Fort Wayne. The Run N Slam always attracts the top competition from all over the nation to Indiana. This year was no different with Seattle Rotary and Boo Williams being two examples of top team from different coasts.

My Indiana Select 2010 group played well. We took the Michigan Mustangs down to the wire to lose by 1. It was a great game with a lot of energy and many great plays. It was a heart breaker to lose but I was happy with our effort and overall play. As a coach, it was a great game to get to use game strategy...time-outs to stop the clock with under 90 seconds left in the game, quick hitting plays down the stretch, out-of-bounds plays to draw up with 10 seconds left. Those are fun things for coaches.

The Michigan Mustangs' point guard was superb. Athletic and skilled is a tough combo. Lightning quick with handles and could jump out of the gym which he showed with a blow-by drive in the half court set and capped the drive off with a monster dunk. He was impressive. I wish I would have gotten his name after the game but I was upset about how the game ended.

We ended up losing our first game of tournament play to Team Cbiz out of Ohio. Ralph Hill dominated us in the first half and the first quarter mainly where he had a handful of dunks after blowing by our defenders. He then proceeded to bury a 3 after I told our guy to give him space because he couldn't shoot which he heard and took exception to. "The kid with the inside-outside game chose Dayton over Akron, Butler, Notre Dame, and Georgia Tech." He was good to say the least. We ended up scoring 101 points and losing which is tough in the time frame of a high school game. We could not stop him and when we did they had two other good players that would find the open spot and hit shots.

Defense needs to improve for us to be a good team. We are a short team but we have talent to beat good teams. We were missing our Junior All-Star due to prom against Team Cbiz. I would have loved to see if he could do anything to Mr. Hill. It would have been a great test for him.