A nice week!

Heading into this week, we were cautiously optimistic about our chances against both South Side and Wawasee. Despite the fact we had to go on the road to play those games and remembering that we had lost to both of those teams last year, we really felt like we could get the job done. And we did.

After doing enough things well in our Wednesday night victory at South Side (shot well, dominated the boards, hit clutch free throws, locked up defensively in the fourth quarter), the kids were rock solid yesterday at Wawasee. Despite falling behind early, they just stuck to the game plan and eventually overwhelmed their opponents. I cannot remember a more devastating defensive performance by one of my teams against a formidable foe. Wawasee was 4-1 going into the game and probably could have been 5-0 if they had caught a couple breaks in a close loss to Fairfield. Yesterday was no contest. Paige and Becky led the charge and everybody participated in trapping and rotating to cover. It was very, very nice!

The transition game also looked good. Wawasee's press had very little impact on us because we had the ball at halfcourt sometimes before they could even get organized. Then it was a race to the basket for layups or free throws. We shot 31 times from the line yesterday, led by Cassie's school-record 10-10 performance. Even some of the Wawasee faithful commented about the quality of our running game. Other areas were strong too. We kept turnovers down (13) which was a point of emphasis. Shooting was still pretty good, though not quite to the level as Wednesday night. Still, I can live with shooting 48% from the field.

The best part of the day was watching a veteran team play like a veteran team. They were on the same page offensively and defensively. There were very few mental mistakes. The younger kids are assimilating nicely and adding weapons to an already solid core group. We've got another solid test - at home!! - Wednesday vs. Whitko, then will begin to ease into finals week and Christmas break with games against sectional opponents, Bethany Christian and Blackhawk Christian. It's hard to believe we're even talking about the mid-season break already, but time flies when you're having fun!