Tale of Two Halves

Sure, this has been said before of basketball games, or just games in general. But this reigned true of our game last night. Last weekend we had our first league game. Long game short, we played horribly embarrassing. It was definitely a game that you would like to forget. However, a positive came at the end of the week. Only 4 days later, we would get to face that same team in a Cup game. Now this game would do nothing for our record, but even more important than our record, this game would give us a chance to redeem ourselves from the not so proud moments of our previous meeting. My take on the game was simple: regardless of what the score was at the end of the game, we NEEDED to show that we could fight back and that we weren't playing in the past.

The first half was an exact duplicate of our first game. We didn't rebound. Didn't talk on defense. Missed more than our fair share of layups and wide open shots. It seemed like it was a "here we go again" game that we were just going to throw away.

Before the second half started, the message was simple. All we have to play for is this second half. Forget what happened in the first 20 minutes and play as hard as you can. What do we have to lose? We're supposed to lose this game by more than 20. At that point, something switched, whether it was pride or simply just taking enough, our team came together and played one of the best halves of basketball since I have been on this team (and that's a little over 3 seasons). All the keys of a successful team fell into place. There was communication on the floor. There was hustle for loose balls. Defense was a desire. Teamwork was second nature.

I was definitely proud of what we accomplished, and we did it as a team.