Game 2- Gunter vs. Heat

It's always hard to tell how much you are improving when you play a much weaker team.  This team was athletic and hustled well.  They did great with stopping us from fast breaking (which is what usually separates us from other teams).  When I went to look at the books, the Heat Team only earned 8pts.  The rest of the points were foul shots or lucky throw up three pointers from beyond NBA three point line (HAHA).  So really, I kind of count this win as a blow out (40-22 win)!!

Here is what pleased me tonight, as a coach...... Take a look at what I wanted to work on this past week and let's see how we have improved in just one week.

Last Week's Focus List:
1) Transitioning into a man defense.  We struggled to ever really run a true man defense at any time. Our man defense looked sooo much better tonight.  We did much better with transitioning from man to 3-2 zone.  Great communication too!! :-)
2) Full court layups---with correct rebounding positions of other players. We didn't have many fast break layups, but we did have in the lane drives and we made majority of our layups from what I recall.
3) Free Throws---to my surprise we gave up way too many free throws.  I don't have the books in front of me, but if I recall correctly, we made 3 out of 12??  OUCH! We improved from 22% to 50%.  Still need to get that over 70%, but it's progress!!!! :-)
4) OFFENSE.....our offense plays were not ran much at all, and when we did run them, they were forced and OPEN HOLES were overlooked. This is still something I want to focus more on.  But I did see some moments of excellent executions of a few plays.  Tiger (aka Motion) worked well when the guards would pause to look down low:-).  Slowing down, less dribbling and more passing is something I want to work on when it comes to offense.  Sometimes we go into "FLIP-OUT MODE" and miss scoring opportunities.
5) Passing---must learn to bounce pass more.
6) Inbound Play positioning for the post.  EXCELLENT TONIGHT ON INBOUND PLAYS AND POSITIONING! 

So, after going back and looking at this list, I am very happy with our performance tonight!  We still have SOOOO much more to work on.  I think my biggest fear is PRESSING, as we haven't had the opportunity to use our press.   

PLAYER OF THE GAME!!!!  
Two players stuck out in my mind for PLAYER OF THE GAME tonight......
1) Bryson Rigsby----He did an amazing job taking it to the hole when it was available and had some great bounce passes inside for some great assist tonight! Excellent defense too..... Keep moving those feet:-) B had 9pts
2) Davis Autry-----Excellent on the boards and took great care of the ball after rebounding!!!  Davis had 11pts, all which were earned well!!  I am seeing Davis learning to GET BIG under the basket!!  He made it look so easy too:-)

Other Scores for this game were: Zander Turner 9pts,  Kyle Watson 4pts, Jasek Hooker 5pts, and Trey Phillips 2pts.