Just a little note to the seven people that read this, I got my first head coaching Technical foul the other day when our JV's play against Northwestern. Quite hysterical and all I said was "Are you kidding me? Everyone in the gym heard it." This was after one of my guys essentially got a low five when driving to the basket. At least I got that one out of the way. Now I just need a win. JV's also lost to Elmhurst by 3 yesterday.
On to Saturday night's main event. We took on the Bluejays from Elmhurst. It is a homecoming game for Jordan Schmidt. His family lives about 20 minutes down the road and a lot of friends and family made it to the game. A couple of his high school coaches were there as well. Great to see them supporting their former players (one of many on the college level).
Elmhurst made it quite an event with the lights out and spotlights on their players during the player introductions. Even their cheerleaders had these little lights in their poms poms to create more atmosphere. It somewhat reminded me of Apollo taking on the Russian in Rocky IV. Apollo comes out with all this glits and glamour and proceeds to get pummeled. I was hoping that were going to be like Drago.
The game started off a little slow for us as Carl Hipp lost the tip to 6'2" Zach Boyd (that doesn't happen often). The game was back and forth for a little bit until we decided to pressure the basketball a little more and we created a lot of turnovers and a lot of confusion. We were up as many as 18 in the first half led by some great defense by Levi Wenrich and Brandon Rieg. That burst was the spurtability (I don't know if that's a word but they use it on tv) that we always had with our Brockport teams. The first half ended with us taking a 13 point lead to the locker room. We had very balanced scoring in the first with Mike Campbell, Carl Hipp, Brandon Rieg, and Christian Taber aka Danny Ainge all with 6 points.
The second half did not start the way would we have liked with a bunch of turnovers on our end and our guys not playing at the intensity like the first half on defense. Elmhurst switched over to zone and it made us somewhat stagnant on offense and we weren't able to get the penetration and post passes as we would have liked. The biggest thing for us is that we didn't want Zach Boyd or Sean Fendley to get hot. We somewhat took away Boyd but Fendley made three 3's in the second half because we were either lazy or didn't find him. Elmhurst took the lead on a questionable three point play with about a minute left in the game. We came back down the floor with a jumper by Mike Campbell. We fouled again right after that, just missed a steal, as Mike McCurdy knocked down both free throws. Next possession, we got the ball to Carl inside and he hit a turnaround jumper to make it a one point lead again. On the ensuing inbounds play we trapped Boyd big time and he swung his elbows to create some space. The refs called an intentional foul on Boyd due to the new Manny Harris Rule (not the name of the rule but it is because of him). Noah Aguirre hits both free throws and we take the lead. After a series of back and forth free throws, we ended up with a four point victory. Our first win against Elmhurst in three years.
We were led by Carl's 15 points and 8 boards (5 offensive) and Mike Campbell with 12 points. We had balanced scoring behind that with Jordan Schmidt having 9, Danny Ainge with 8, Noah with 7, Brandon, Levi Wenrich, and Tyler Pannell with 6. Great effort from our guards last night. Much different story than the Northwestern game.
Here is a video of the whole game that is available on youtube.
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