Big win

I suspect, given the number of hits this blog had yesterday, that people were expecting a recap of the Concordia game. Believe me, I would have loved to put some thoughts out here sooner, but even Sundays are busy days for me and my family. So here, late on Monday night, I type.

The Saturday evening game at Concordia was billed as a matchup between two highly-ranked teams in Fort Wayne. They came in as the #4 team in Class 3A and we are still sitting at #1 in 1A. They defend you like crazy; we like to score. It was going to be a battle of styles, no doubt about it. I anticipated a game in the 50s because we've never scored more than 58 against them and only 42 last year in a close loss. Happily, I was wrong.

We had 45 points by halftime, eclipsing their defensive average of 40.2 in just 16 minutes. Unfortunately, we had some foul trouble and didn't do a very good job defending our own basket. The game would ebb and flow for most of the second half as both Coach Miller and I made adjustment after adjustment. In the end, we held them off and finished the game well. It was, without a doubt, our best game of the year considering the opponent.

The nice thing for me is that we identified a few more things that we need to do better in order to maximize our efforts. We still haven't peaked - and don't want to - until we hit the tournament trail in February. This week will present some unusual challenges. Tuesday night we face a winless Central Noble team. The challenge there will be to avoid embarrassing them and to make sure we make it off of the floor without injury. Friday and Saturday, we will be at Culver Girls Academy in a tournament. We've won it the past two seasons and I anticipate that we can do it again if we continue to play well. We first square off with Western Reserve Academy from Ohio. With a win, we will likely face Culver in the finals.

It will be an overnight trip which is something we haven't done yet this year. I look at it as practice for the state tournament when we might need to stay overnight one or more times along the trail. It may seem presumptuous or unusual to look at it this way, but it has been a reality in the past, and it would be a failure on my part if we didn't consider all foreseeable possibilities as we begin preparations for the state tournament series. It's part of being a championship program. That is our #1 goal and all of our energies are devoted to achieving it. Plus, it's fun!