Coach’s Journal: Hutchison
The sickness strikes back.
Another week of practice and another wave of illness hitting us. This weekend we were going into the games without Barrett, Grayson and Jarrett. Much like our Eielson games, it was a chance to see who was ready to step into an unfamiliar role for the team.
We had already played Hutch a few weeks ago in the Delta tournament, so we knew what to expect: some zone, some man and some good Hutch players that had the size and length to defend us well, and also put the ball in the basket.
Our coaching staff watched a lot of game film from last weekend (most notably from our Nome game) and we found some kinks in our defense that we wanted to fix and emphasize in practice this week. I’ll spare everyone what could easily become a thousand word essay on our pac-line defense, but it was another step for us to keep trending upwards. Like I mentioned in last week’s journal – it’s all about getting better every day and hopefully peaking right around the state tournament.
With two new starters: Jace and Zach (along with our usual: Nick, Tino and Owen) we started in our “42” half court trap again. It was a new experience for Jace and Zach being plugged into that in meaningful minutes.
I think one of the great advantages we have running this 1-3-1 trap is that it’s a very uncommon zone defense to run. I don’t know if i’ve even seen another team run it ever, which means that most teams don’t spend a lot of time playing or practicing against one.
It looked great for the most part. Besides a few little mishaps or slow rotations (which is to be expected when you’re trying something new for essentially the first time), those guys stepped into the role just fine and got some good experience.
Offensively it seemed like our guys could just get whatever we wanted to. Our “42” trap is built to generate a lot of steals which lead to fast break opportunities where I think we are at our best. However, when we had to slow down and run a half court set on offense, we had some of the best ball movement and passing i’ve seen maybe all season.
Hutch switched between a 2-3 zone and man defense throughout the game and nothing really slowed us down. A few possessions here or there where we would huck up a couple bad shots in a row, but always regrouped and got back to what we should be doing.
We jumped out to around a 20 point lead fairly quickly and kept it right around there throughout the game, winning 43-22. Tino had 16, Nick had 10 and almost everyone that played scored in what was a fairly balanced scoring effort.
Saturday’s game was a different story. We changed the the starting lineup, swapping Zach and Jace out for Levi and Rylen.
Early in this one, we struggled with turnovers big time. Hutchison came ready to play and they were converting a lot of our turnovers into points.
The other challenge we faced was the way the game was being called. This was a very physical game for both sides. This is another area we have been working on to get better, how to maintain composure when the physicality allowed is higher than we are used to.
Sometimes we can mentally get taken out of our game when we work hard to drive to the hoop with no fouls. It was very chippy for both sides though, a number of technical fouls were called and some warnings as well.
With all that going on, Hutch played us evenly for the first quarter, 17-17. We went back in forth throughout the game but were able to slowly build a lead, quarter by quarter, adding about 5-7 extra points to Hutch’s score and did eventually pull out the win 60-44.
A couple things that really made a difference to me: the play from Rylen and Nick. Rylen didn’t get a starters share of minutes necessarily, but when he was in he really had a big impact on the game. He gets into places and makes things happen, a lot of which might not show up in the stats sheet, but he did do a very good job rebounding for us from the guard position.
Nick had his career high scoring with 27 points. We took advantage of mismatches in the post with him and he scored from those possessions a lot, but also did a good job driving to the hole and keeping the defense honest. I think all of his points came from great shots at the rim and that was a big difference maker for us.
Tino also chipped in 16 points and we ended the weekend with two good conference wins, and a lot of experience.
With two more weeks left in the regular season, first against Monroe and then Delta at home the week after, we are looking forward to two great challenges ahead and continue to get better with our eyes on the regional tournament!