VHS Coaches Journal
Hello again Buccaneer Family. Welcome to week two of the basketball season! After a long four-games-in-five-nights road trip to Fairbanks, we jumped straight into another four-games-in-five-nights trip to scenic southeast Alaska (specifically Sitka.)
We were scheduled to travel home Sunday, spend Monday home in Valdez to get a practice in, and then hit the road Tuesday. Unfortunately, mother nature had other plans. We ended up spending an extra night stranded in Glennallen after the crazy weather Alaska was experiencing closed Thompson pass. We had a tiny little window of opportunity open up Monday night, and we ended up finding our way home for a quick turnaround. Tuesday morning, we loaded right back up and made our way to Anchorage to clear skies and a beautiful drive, eventually making our flight and arriving in Sitka.
I think it was a great lesson in toughness for us. Some of our team standards revolve around toughness (and it’s honestly my favorite of them all.). Being stranded somewhere, two long weeks of travel, playing 8 games against some really tough competition without any practices in between to work on things really reveals our character. “How do we handle things when things aren’t going our way?” It’s always interesting to see how the guys will respond. Our number one standard is “no excuses.” We have what it takes to win and we don’t complain. We were excited to see how the guys responded to all of this adversity early in the season.
On top of all this, there was also a huge adult league tournament going on in between all of our games so the boys had lots of basketball to watch, play and enjoy all around!
Game 1: Mt. Edgecumbe
Our first matchup was against last year’s state runner-up. We watched some game film on these guys to get an idea of how we should best prepare however we could with limited gym time over the past two weeks. Earlier this season they had a thriller against North Pole with a final score in the high 70’s where they won by only a basket or two. With the departure of their legendary coach of the past couple decades, we were interested to see how this new-look team would show up for the season.
This game was similar to the game against West Valley we had last week. We started out really well and towards the end tapered off and lost by double digits. Mt. Edgecumbe had a couple BIG dudes, which seems like it is going to be our biggest weakness this season (defending big post guys). Jarrett and Tino lead the way scoring in the first half. Again, their relentless attacking opened things up for themselves and others; it also got Mt. Edgecumbe’s guys into foul trouble and we were able to capitalize on some free throws as well as forcing them to sub some of their better players out early.
Finding ourselves down by only 3 at halftime had us hopeful that this would be a good game. However, in the 2nd half, Mt. Edgecumbe started hitting their 3’s and took advantage of our other weakness: turnovers.
Our questionable decision making on passes turned into fastbreak points for the Braves on at least half of our possessions. It’s going to be hard to win when the opponent has the ball twice as much, with twice as many chances to score as we do. Telegraphing where we are going to throw the ball, not attempting to make any shot or ball fakes before a pass, trying to “thread the needle”, or just attempting to make what we call “home run” passes is just not something that works at this level. Great defenses will anticipate those every time and get steals/deflections, and that is exactly what happened.
As I’ve mentioned in almost every game we’ve played so far too: our low post defense was not up to our standard. We really need to get better at denying entry passes to their post guys. If they get the ball down low it is a code red for us, and so far in every game the opponents have scored at a high percentage when they get the ball into the painted area on a post touch. Mt. Edgecumbe’s bigs were eating us alive with those high percentage shots and rebound-putbacks.
In the end, the Braves took the win 82-71. Jarrett and Tino lead the way scoring again with 22 and 21.
Game 2: Sitka
We were pretty excited for this rematch (well, we’re excited for all the games this weekend to be honest). What we remember from our previous contest: Sitka has a couple bigs that are very skilled and fundamentally sound. Whenever I watch basketball games/practices/drills/whatever my eyes are always drawn to the feet and footwork of players, and their post guys had some beautiful footwork on their post moves. What I think was Kobe Bryant’s greatest skill in his career was his footwork; and it’s crazy how much something so simple can open up a player’s game. Apart from their bigs, they have a great point guard and a sharpshooting wing who can hit a 3pt from anywhere.
This game started out rough. Sitka hit three straight 3’s to jump out to a 9-0 lead and forced us to call a timeout before we even knew what hit us. A couple missed shots at the rim for us, mixed with a turnover or two, and Sitka capitalized every time.
We continued to struggle with turnovers and poor rebounding and Sitka continued to take advantage. For as bad as it looked, we only trailed by four points after one quarter, 16-14.
The second quarter was a lot more of the same: turnovers and poor rebounding. Again, as has been our weakness this season, their bigs getting post touches were a problem for us. We did have more success in this game than we have in any of our previous contests, however Sitka added to their lead and went into the half up 36-24.
In the second half our boys came out with a renewed sense of urgency. Jarrett and Tino by themselves went on an 11-0 run, and Connor and Zach hit a couple shots during the spurt as well. In the midst of all that, we held Sitka to seven points, which would be the lowest they scored in a quarter all game. Jarrett had a nice sequence where he drew three straight shooting fouls, and despite missing the 2nd free throw two of the three times, he got his own offensive rebound each time to gain us extra possessions. By the end of the period, we were right back in it, only down by two points (43-41.)
Another interesting factor in this game were the fouls called. Part of the game is living by the way the whistle blows, adjusting to the level of physicality allowed and finding ways to use that to your advantage. Sometimes the officials will let a game be very physical; it takes a lot of contact for them to call a foul, and other times they are stricter in the level of contact they allow. Neither way is necessarily better or worse than the other, it’s just how we have to adapt and find a way to let it help how we are going to play. In this game there were 44 fouls called and 36 free throws shot. The level of physicality was the lowest that I’ve personally ever seen allowed in a game.
The fourth quarter was just absolutely bonkers. It went back and forth, possession for possession, the entire 8 minutes. We hit a three, then Sitka hit a three. We drove and dished for 2, Sitka drove and dished for 2. Another three answered with a Sitka three. Free throws followed by free throws. It went back and forth every possession until the buzzer rang. Tino scored 15 points in the quarter with Jarrett, Connor and Zach all contributing too.
Sitka was up 2 with about a minute to go and Tino made an and-1 layup plus the free throw to put us up 1. Then Sitka went down and made a tough shot over our defense to go back up by 1. We came back down with time dwindling and Tino found Connor for a shot under the basket to put us back up 1. Sitka went the length of the court and found their big under the basket after a miscommunication on defense and took the lead again with 1.2 seconds left on the clock. We managed to call a timeout to draw up a play, however we couldn’t get a shot off as time expired and Sitka won by 1 point in the end 68-67.
It was really a fun game despite the loss, and as I’ve mentioned before these are the types of games that really help us get better. Despite how bad at times it looked, we hung with a great team and took them to the final second of the game. Come March, these are the contests that will have proven to give us the most growth. The leading scorers for the game were Tino with 28, Jarrett with 16 and Connor with 12.
Game 3: Sitka (again)
Our rematch started out very similar to the first game. Sitka jumped out to an 11-0 lead to start and maintained the lead for the entirety of the first half. They were dominating us on the offensive glass.
In previous coach’s journals I’ve talked about points per possession averages. Typically, great teams will hover around the 1.0 PPP mark. If a team like that misses their shot, but gets an offensive rebound, that PPP average jumps up to something like 1.8. On a third or fourth offensive rebound, that number keeps going up. To explain it in simpler terms, on an offensive rebound, teams are generally twice as likely to score (and that chance increases the more offensive rebounds that are claimed.)
Most of Sitka’s possessions in the game were met with some solid defensive effort by our guys, however, our failure to collect the rebound off their missed shots plagued us once again. There were multiple possessions in the game where Sitka got anywhere from 2 to 5 offensive rebounds. With that many chances to score, eventually they converted. I don’t have the exact number but throughout the game Sitka had at least 20 extra possessions. If a decent team hovers around that 1.0 PPP mark, as Sitka does, that means they basically had an extra free 20 points just from our lack of rebounding. It is going to be hard to win any game when you spot a team 20 points.
Now, despite all that, somehow our boys managed to keep fighting and were still right there with Sitka throughout most of the game. Our toughness really was showing in a good way. There were times if you hadn’t seen the score, you’d think we were down by 25, yet we were only down 7 heading into the fourth quarter. Tino and Jarrett continued to lead the way with their relentless effort attacking the paint.
Early into the fourth quarter, Sitka had a hot 3pt shooting spurt and ended up running away with the win. They had 18 points off of 3pt attempts in that quarter alone and that would pretty much seal the deal for them to win 72-55.
Another great experience for us, and a testament to our toughness. It has been a long two weeks of travel with no practice time, playing against some high-level programs. We’ve been right there with these teams for 90% of game time. Again, these experiences will help us so much even if the guys don’t necessarily realize it in the moment.
Tino and Jarrett lead the way scoring again with 21 and 18.
Game 4: Mt. Edgecumbe
Once again, we found ourselves down (13-2) to start the game before we even knew what happened. In the first quarter, the Braves made three 3pt shots (two of them in that initial 13-2 run) and a number of rebound-putbacks and looked like they were set to take off.
It almost seems like our calling card to let teams jump out to a significant early lead, just for us to fight back and get back into the game, and that’s just what we did.
Jarrett and Tino lead the charge with their aggressive drives into the painted area, scoring 8 points collectively, and they were able to find Connor and Zach who each hit big 3pt shots for us along the way. At the end of the first quarter, we found ourselves down only two points: 16-18.
In the second quarter, our defense looked awesome. I’ve mentioned what seem to be our biggest weaknesses are 1. Defending post touches and 2. Rebounding, and we were firing on all cylinders on both. Connor and Zach did great work denying those post entry passes and baiting the wings to throw lobs to their bigs down low. Tino did an awesome job anticipating those lobs and had 3 or 4 steals, and we did a solid job limiting the Braves to a single shot per possession.
Keeping the ball out of the painted area and running shooters off the 3pt line to force tough midrange shots is what we aim our defensive identity to be, and we played that as well as we could have asked. Our defense held Mt. Edgecumbe to their lowest scoring quarter of the week with 8 points.
Our offense continued to wreak havoc. Zach and Connor lead the way scoring with a combined 13 points, feeding off of Tino and Jarret’s relentless attacks. They each, again, hit big 3pt shots and we went into the half up nine points: 35-26.
Coming out of the half our offense continued to surge. Tino and Jarrett earned a number of free throws and started to get some of Mt. Edgecumbe’s players into some serious foul trouble, even drawing a technical foul from one of them. Connor and Jace contributed and Romen hit another big 3pt shot for us.
The Braves actually had a hot shooting streak in the beginning of the 3rd as well. They hit four 3pt shots and went on a pretty big run before we collected ourselves and went on a couple quick scoring bursts of our own.
The final quarter was much of the same. Mt. Edgecumbe made five 3pt shots and kept trying to make a comeback, but every time they hit something big or went on a run, we answered. Connor had two huge 3 pointers for us, Zach had a couple of great moves around the basket and Jarrett shot 6-7 from the free throw line to seal the win for us: 80-72.
The High scorers for the game were Connor with 23, Tino with 19, Jarrett with 16 and Zach with 15.
This was easily our best game so far this season, and for it to come on the tail end of this crazy two-week road trip we have been on against a great program was huge. Having four players get 15+ points along with the awesome defense we played, especially after not having any practices this month was really impressive. It’s really a testament to the toughness and fight these guys show. Every game we’ve played so far, we have been right there competing but just fell a little short at the end, and it was great to see us start to figure it out and end this trip with an awesome win!!!
I think everybody is looking forward to some much-needed rest and practice time. Next week we have our first taste of conference action as we travel to Delta (with a pit stop in Glennallen along the way).
We are super proud of all the guys!!! Go Bucs!!!!