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Upcoming competition:
Saturday morning: IL Rockets. Based out of Naperville, this is a team that AP has seen a bunch of times, although I'm working with the assumption that it has been primarily U14 kids in the past. They generally play D, have not had gifted playmakers, and at the U14 level they mug AP as part of their rock-fight strategy to win games 30-28 (narrator - they usually lose rock fights against AP teas). The Rockets play in the BlueStar league.
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This was not a rock fight. And although the team was wearing Rockets uniforms, it was not a traditional Rockets team either from what I was told during the game. I was working the scoring table for this one, so chatted with a Rockets parent. Basically, all nine of their freshmen came from another program that shuttered over the pandemic and they added the best 8th grader in the Rockets system. AP has competed against that 8th grader a few times but she never looked better than she did in this game surrounded by a team that really shot the ball well. They hit 8 three pointers in the first half, building out a nine point lead that they never surrendered, defeating AP's team 51-46.
AP got very limited minutes in this game, and she was really effective in those minutes. She is one of the fastest players on the team and also among the most active defenders. If the plan was to stop teams from burying threes (it was in the 2nd half, I was able to overhear the halftime talk) then she should have played more. But one of the coaches shared after the game that it was pre-determined that AP was not going to play much coming back from an injury, missing a couple of weeks of practice, etc.
Our team has some terrific size. The biggest girl is about 6'5, and we've got another pair of six footers. But our lineups with two bigs did not defend well in this game, and they did not create enough mismatches on the glass or in the post to offset the shooting barrage in the first half. In the second half, the 3s stopped falling but there were too many turnovers.
Towards the end of the game, AP had a cut to the basket and her teammate found her for a layup to cut the score to 49-46 with just over a minute to go. AP got a steal on the inbounds and passed to a wide open teammate two feet from the rim. Bricked layup. And we never got another point. That was the one that stuck with AP after the game ... she felt like the game was there for the taking at the end.
AP finished with 8 points, all from inside ten feet. She moved well without the ball, shared the ball on the fast break and in half-court, was disruptive defensively, and hit her two foul shots. If she does that every game this summer, she will be helping her team a lot. If she does what she did on a projected minutes basis, she is going to have people taking notice.
I was just relieved to see her moving so well on the court. Absolutely no tentativeness, no favoring one side, no limits on what she could do. And no soreness afterwards. Frustrating to lose a game where I had expected a victory, but the opponent shot great and earned their win. Onwards.