Basketball funnies

I am back. What a weekend that was! A pretty nice Saturday, followed by a Sunday that turned exceedingly grey. As we waited for the winter storm that wasn't, we did get to go out in a bit of a slush storm. Slush was falling from the sky. Fortunately, it was not like the street slush, all brown and dirty. This was fresh slush, without the added benefit of added street crap. It was pristine slush, that felt great landing on my head and slowly melting, causing a cold water drip to run down my back.

There is nothing better in a time of uncertain weather to add cold to the mix. This leaves us with "do we get rain, snow or something that runs in between or changes from rain to snow"? All I know is that it will be whatever is the least wanted.

The Lad's basketball game on Saturday was interesting. We should have won, but we we only had 7 players. The triple shifting was getting to our players. Besides, we could not "hide" some of the weaker players with only seven. We blew a big lead but managed a tie.

The Lad played pretty well. He did his rebounding thing and scored a couple of baskets. The refs were inconsistent and that was driving me crazy. One was making calls and the other was useless. There were double and triple teams not called. The Lad got smacked a few times while shooting with no call being made.

The Lad did exact a measure of revenge. He creamed one of their players while shooting, sending him crashing into a row of benches. He was so proud of himself. Sadly, I was as well. He shed his passive nature and showed some good aggression. Now, if he will continue that bit of nastiness in his play, time will tell. I am trying to get him to play that way, though. He does not have to put up with the abuse under the boards. If he has to take it, he may as well dish some out as well.

We will see how we do when we have a full team on Saturday. I think 8 to 10 players is ideal. 10 gives us two "lines" that can be made pretty even. 8 and 9 allow us to double shift the better players, so that works for me. 11 is a pain because we have to double shift players off and I do not like to do that with our better players. What can you do?

I do have to speak with the convener regarding what constitutes a double team. I had words with the better of the two refs from the last game. Keep in mind that they are high school students, so there was no yelling on my part. My mediation/negotiation skills really do come in handy. I maintain my composure and listen. Anyway, he explained his interpretation of the rule and I had to disagree on part of it (as I said it, I realized he was the dude with the whistle, so my opinion did not matter and I said that--he smiled and agreed). I need to have that clarified so I understand and then impress upon him to tell his refs how to call it.

Well, that is about all for me today. Ciao!