What’s up?,
These last three weeks I have been really busy. We have had tournaments every weekend as well as practices. In between that I’ve been trying to keep up on all my homework and studying. We started our stretch by going down to DC. We played in the DC Assault tournament and made a run to the semifinals where we lost a close, heated game to DC Assault. Along the way we beat three tough teams, Maryland’s Finest, Run-n- Gun and the Baltimore Panthers. I was really proud of our team. Everyone contributed with Jordan and Jadon hitting big shots. Marcus and Jameer played hard inside, grabbing key rebounds and making layups. Jamir Harris made some great plays at the basket and his shot was falling too. Isaiah came late (he was on vacation) and added the scoring we needed especially in our quarterfinal game. Cheema and Kyle played tough defense making defensive stops and getting rebounds for us. Tiger got some buckets and is always a great teammate. Overall we played well defensively, helping and rotating when we were supposed to. Although we were all disappointed with the loss to DC Assault we had a lot to feel good about and build on.
Our next tournament was the MDC. We had a couple of practices to prepare and Coach Pete reminded us that even though we had a good showing in DC we still had to go out and prove ourselves again. Our first game matchup was against the Fairfax stars. I was looking forward to this game because I’m friends with their point guard Carlos Thrash and Coach Pittman. They came out with a lot of intensity and pressure and they jumped out on us. We fought back to within two and the chance to win the game but we missed and ended up losing by 2. Our second game was Albany Dream Team. We pretty much controlled the game from the tip. We ran our sets and they worked. They made a late run but we held them off to beat them by 10. We won our pool based on points and were on to the quarterfinals against New Heights. They played a zone and some man so we just ran our sets. I think we played excellent defense and we boxed out well and grabbed a lot of defensive rebounds. We ended up beating them by 7 so we had to play Team Scan in the Semi’s. We were hanging with Team Scan for a while, but then we started turning the ball over and they turned our turnovers into points. We didn’t shoot the ball as well as we normally do either. We ended up getting blown out. It was a tough game, I hate losing like that. This was a good game for our team to have though. We gotta keep working and trying to get better.
We had a couple practices and we were back at it again with the Playaz tournament. The first game we played the Rockland Rockets and we blew them out. We pressed them and they made turnovers. The next day we played IYB Elite. We blew them out also. We rested up because we knew we had a tough one against the Playaz. We started out real well and the game was close. They pulled away but we made a late spurt to get within 5 at half time. In the second half it was a different case. We weren’t making the easy baskets and we didn’t play team defense. We didn’t rotate well and weren’t coming up with rebounds. We ended up losing by 17. Our next game was against New Heights and after our earlier loss I really wanted our team to play well. But we started off bad and we played the same way throughout the game. Our defense was terrible and we couldn’t score either. Not a good combination. We missed layups and got outrebounded. Coach Pete was not happy, and either was I. I tried to make some plays and get to the basket, but I waited too long and the game was too out of hand. We got blown out by a team we just beat a week ago. Our team has had three bad losses in these last two weekends. We have two practices this week though and we have to get some things worked out because we play in the Rumble in the Bronx 15u this weekend. We have to tighten up our defense and play a lot smarter. But no matter what, win or lose I will continue to play every possession like it’s my last.
Good luck to all the local teams going down to the MIT this weekend! Kick some butt!
The General is out.
