The White team played their first tournament of the second session of the year with some new faces on the team. YBA is glad to welcome Ryan Pham, and Malacci Wharry to the YBA Family. We also gladly welcomed back Riley Rosenbrook, who missed most of last session with a lingering heel injury, and Josh Vu who missed last session. We played very well this weekend going 1-2 with a very good performance to start the weekend then some tough "growth" games against teams that were either more experienced or fricking huge! Follow along as I tell the tale..
Sat 9 am Rocklin High
Xtreme 54 Hurricanes 44
Summary: We started aggressively however we missed 7 close range shots or lay-ups in the 1st quarter and trailed 15-5 after one quarter. We started applying "real" pressure midway through the 2nd and the results were obvious. It was 21-10 hurricanes with 5:30 remaining and we then went on a 17-0 run to end the half. Coming out of Halftime with a 27-21 lead, we never looked back as the run gave us the confidence that we have lacked. This resulted in us pushing the lead all the way up to 14 at one point and we never led by less than 5 points throughout the rest of the game. Mitch Martin came up huge for us with his all out effort Defensively helped spark our run and helped us to maintain our lead. He was constantly around the ball and was consistently getting steals or deflections. He also had a great game passing the ball as he seemed to always make the "right" decision. Other keys were Riley, Garret, Malacci, & Josh who all made at least one 3 point fg. Led by Riley who made 3 3pts including one late in the 4th to stop a run by the hurricanes and seal the win for us.
Game Ball: Mitch Martin
Defensive MVP: Mitch Marin & Jason Mazure
Offensive MVP: Riley Rosenbrook in particular & the whole team overall! Tremendous passing and shooting performance!! Career High in points scored for the White team!
Sat 11:10 am Rocklin High
Xtreme 19 EDH 62
Summary: How do you get a terrible score like that you ask? I'll explain for you, we seem to be intimidated by EDH, both teams. We game planned everything that they were going to do before the game, they did exactly what we covered and we simply failed to execute or be in the proper state of mind from the jump ball on as we were never competitive against an EDH team that didn't have all of their "stars" for this game. They took our ball every time we had it and just refused to let us play. We were rattled by their pressure, which was mild at best. We didn't execute our game plan as we continually attempted to dribble through 2 or 3 defenders rather than passing. We didn't box-out, we failed to properly defend their pick and roll offense and we didn't execute our half court offense very well. We missed most of the easy shots that we got, didn't capitalize on our free throws and never got any easy steals for lay-ups. We didn't play our tempo we played their game the whole time and they whomped us. We have to learn that we can't play other team's game, we have to force them to play ours. We must impose our will on the other team & force them to speed up games until they can't keep up. We will learn.
Game ball: Josh Vu and Chris Hurley
Defensive MVP: Mitch Marin
Offensive MVP: We were playing offense?? 19 points doesn't indicate much offense : (
Sunday 11:10 HWP crt 6
Xtreme 44 Rocktown 66
Summary: Facing two 6'2"+ players, and without our only player taller than my 5'9", we again came out intimidated and were in a deep hole for the 3rd game in a row. Unfortunately, we didn't figure out that we could indeed play against giants until it was already too late. We played with tremendous energy and fight from the 2nd quarter on and easily won the 2nd & 3rd quarters, cutting the lead from 25 down to 11 going into the 4th. They came out and won the game in the 4th with 4 big 3pt shots that stomped out the last of our competitive fire for the game. We learned our lessons in the game though, because we made our comeback and got off the mat and fought back after the early blow. We forced them to change what they were doing, we tired them out, we wore them down, we frustrated them, we outworked them, we stood up and if we hadn't spotted them a 15 point lead I'm pretty sure we would've beat them, despite missing Jason Mazure for a family event & losing Joseph Lopes to injury. So with no player taller than 5'6 suited up we still gave Rocktown and their twin towers a battle that they will remember and the coach already professed his admiration for our play after the game by saying "Coach, your team gets after it. There's no way we should've been so uncomfortable with the size your giving up. That's really a credit to your kids and their desire and determination. If you guys had showed up in the 1st we probably would've lost that game" He mentioned how well we attacked their ball-handlers throughout the last 3 quarters and also said that we did a good job keeping them "out of sorts" with our man to man defense. I agree with him completely and will expect more of the same moving forward. Individually we were led by Ryan Pham, who did an excellent job of covering their best player and gave up a good 8". Ryan also did very well on Offense, hitting some tough shots and playing intelligently. Josh, Malacci, Garret, Riley, Chris, Daniel and Trent also played well against the Redwoods national forest team. We are better than the last 2 scores indicate and will continue to improve and I expect us to have much more success with the team we have now.
Game Ball: Ryan Pham for guarding their best player end to end and still playing great offense.
Defensive MVP: Ryan Pham, Malacci Wharry
Offensive MVP: Chris Hurley, Garret Smith & Malacci Wharry
Coaches Thoughts:
I saw flashes of what we are striving to become. I really like the new players, the new team moving forward will include Josh Vu & Ryan Pham. I like our team top to bottom and feel like we have 10 players who can and will contribute. We showed what we can do the 1st game, and also what can happen to us the other games. We must continue to work hard and improve if we are to build on our limited success so far. We will be losing Chris Hurley as he is moving up to the Blue team, congrats Chris! Malacci Wharry is also Blue team bound... I would like to point out that I have 10 spots on my blue team and only 9 players right now. I would love to see enough improvement from a white team player to be able to move him up as I prefer to suit up 10 players. We are starting to play like we are listening to the coaches and are willing to go and execute the gameplan in actual games! We have taken two steps forward this weekend, we have to continue to move forward! No back-steps! I really like this team, I know we can achieve success! If you want more minutes earn them in practice and then keep them by executing in games!
"Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable" -THE COACH John Wooden
"Team spirit is an eagerness to sacrifice personal interest for the welfare of all." -THE COACH John Wooden
"Practice makes perfect is a lie, perfect practice makes perfect" -Bobby Knight
