By Coach Steve Mengler
It was a mixed week of results for the seventh grade boy’s basketball team. The team traveled to Meskwaki on Tuesday night to play the Warriors for the first time. It was a slower paced game, especially since the home team chose to not allow any full court pressing in the game.
We started out solid hitting many shots to claim an 11-8 lead after the first quarter, but the team went cold in the second quarter to trail at halftime 21-13. The third quarter was much of the same with the Plainsmen trailing by nine, but a strong half court defensive burst closed the gap to three points in the fourth quarter with two minutes remaining. Unfortunately we turned the ball over the next five times down the court which allowed Meskwaki to pull away for the 41-32 victory.
Even though we scored 32 points in the loss, I was not particularly pleased with the effort of the team on either end of the court. In many instances we were standing around watching a teammate dribble rather than working to either get open or setting a screen for a teammate. This lack of movement made it easy for the other team to guard us as we rarely moved around on the offensive end of the court. We also missed a lot of easy shots including numerous lay ups, hitting 14 of 48 shots for 29 percent from the field. We were a little better at the free throw line hitting four of ten shots for forty percent. We had six players score in the game led by Justin Jacobi with 11 points. Trey Squiers contributed six points, Josh Long added five points, Vance Bohlen and Austin Vranek each had four points, and Adrian Griffith hit one bucket for two points.
It was on the defensive end of the court that we truly lost this game. The opposition was much quicker getting up and down the floor and scored 20 points in transition. When we got the game into a half court situation we controlled the action, but unfortunately we were a step slow much of the game. In many cases the players were concerned with covering only their man, abandoning the idea of team defense and getting back to help other teammates out if they were beaten down the court. After much discussion at halftime this seemed to improve somewhat in the remainder of the game.
We were dominated on the backboards for much of the game, grabbing only 20 rebounds and allowing Meskwaki numerous second, third, and fourth chances to score, which they took great advantage. The two main rebounders in the game were Vranek with six boards and Jacobi with five rebounds.
Hopefully some lessons were learned in this game as practice time is scarce and our schedule is quite busy, turning around to host Montezuma the following night.
Wednesday night against Montezuma started out much like Tuesday night ended against Meskwaki with the team struggling to score points. At the end of the first quarter we trailed 6-5 but managed to gain the upper hand to lead at the half 18-16. In the third quarter it would be safe to say that almost nothing happened, as each team scored only one basket, but finally in the fourth quarter the Plainsmen exploded for twelve points while holding Monte to only two buckets to claim a 32-22 victory.
I really liked the team’s intensity on the offensive boards in this game. Although we still struggled to generate good shots in the half court offense, when we took shots the boys really hit the boards hard to create second and third opportunities. We did not have a great shooting night, hitting only 27 percent of our shots, but we managed 55 shots on the night which is exceptional. We also had balanced scoring again with seven players scoring for the team in this game. Again Jacobi led the team with 10 points, Bohlen and Squiers each contributed six points, Vranek and Jacob Fabor each had four points, and Griffith and Long each added a free throw. We need to continue to work on the offensive end of the court to get teammates open for easy shots. Players need to understand that it takes teamwork to get good offensive shots. If we are depending on someone getting open by dribbling around their defensive man we will struggle to score.
Defensively the boys really tightened the screws in the second half creating a lot of Montezuma turnovers. We did not always capitalize on these opportunities but the tempo of the game certainly shifted into a higher speed which benefited our team. Rebounding we were much more aggressive, led by Jacobi’s nine rebounds. Squiers pulled down four boards and numerous players added two or three.
This was the first victory for the boys since the holiday break so hopefully it will provide some momentum for the remaining schedule. The boys have a busy week coming up with three games, traveling on the road next Monday to BGM, Tuesday to Tri-County, and hosting English Valley on Friday.