It gives you headache and now brain begins trying to find solutions to compensate for things that didn´t go as planned. What I`m a talking about well for example, player or players gets sick, injured something happens that effects your prepairation for the big game, the tournament.
I had one of these "nightmaries" last week. We started practising again in the new year and I knew we would have one player still away on vacation. This is 6 days before the danish cup final, well had a double practise planned (11 players in team in total) 1 away on trip, that leaves 10 players, of course one gets sick - 9 left.
First practise one cant continue because of his fot is giving him problems - 8 left
Practise the next day 1 more player steps of - 7 left, one day off and practise again one player has to sit out.
Practise the next day (last practise before cup final) 10 players dressed, but 1 cant practise - 9 left
10minutes left of practise one of the teams best players looses his balance and of course sprains his ankle. The day before a get message from one of the injures players whom have moved pretty far away from where he used to live, he feels it cant work so he chooses to stop playing.
Gameday:
I was thinking what more can go wrong, but actually trains where in time and we had no problems at all. The player that sprained his ankle said he wanted to try his foot on the warmups. Halfway into the warmups he comes and says coach it cant be done. Stupid me of course I had some hope of him playing, but reality hit me hard there in the gym.
We actually started the game really nice in defense and played as I see it creative offense, but and there is always a but :-) As i wrote we played really nice "D" and we made them take bad shoots, but we didn`t block out at all. We are a very small team and they are big, so they punished us again and again on the boards.
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| Blocking out has to be done in some way or...! |
Tried everyhting to get them to block out, but it was like the one thing just had disapeared from their skillset.
Very frustrating to watch and that continued for the most part of the game. But due to we played well in offense we where still in the game at halftime -7points. If we start blocking out its our game thats how I felt and what we agreed on.....but words, and answering "YES" "yes coach" "lets do it" aint the blocking out no players and sadly we continued to be spectators in rebounding situations. They had a 10p lead for most of the second half and I felt we need 2-3 stops and we can turn this around.
We had some moments where we came back really strong, but theey stoped our "runs" just in time. They won with 18 points and the killed us at the boards. They most have had 40p+ of second chance or third and that we actually where in the game for the most part anyway is something positive at least.
After that prepairation what could I exspect?
Well, if we forget about the rebounding issue me guys played their hearts out, we just forgot about one major important thing in basketball called REBOUNDING and I think after this game they will never forget again cause who wants silver instead of gold?!
