Winding down the first half

With just one game to play before Christmas - this Friday at Blackhawk Christian - we are nearly done with the first half of the regular season. To this point, we've done okay. We've played half of the Summit Athletic Conference and gone 2-2 so far. There is no shame in losing to either Snider or South Side, but it would have been nice to perform a bit better on the defensive end in those games. We scored plenty of points, but we didn't do what we needed to slow them down. In our seven wins, we were just better than the other team on that particular night and played well enough to prevail. No team in Class A plays a tougher schedule, so we're hoping that a season-long set of tough battles will help us when the tournament rolls around. That's been a winning philosophy in the past, and we hope it continues.

It's at this stage of the season that you begin to closely follow the teams that you are likely to see on the tournament trail. Some people may see that as an example of overconfidence. I prefer to think of it as preparation. If you are going to do well in the tournament, you first must believe that you are going to do well. The next logical step is to prepare each night in practice and through the collection of scouting reports and game tapes of potential opponents. Right now, there are probably 6-8 teams in Class A who are having impressive seasons. Some, like Oregon-Davis and Vincennes Rivet are familiar rivals who are once again playing well. Triton, Southern Wells, and Barr-Reeve are all undefeated at this stage. Some newer faces like Riverton Parke and Frontier have now appeared in the latest weekly poll. At the end of the day, the teams who are playing the best basketball in February will be the ones advancing through the tournament. We are trying to get better every night so we might be one of those teams. A lot can happen in the next 7-10 weeks. I hope we can be in the mix when that time comes.