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Saturday afternoon: IL Hoop Dreams is not a program I'm familiar with, although they are based out of Elgin. A look at their Twitter feed reveal a couple of names at the U17 team that I recognize, but no insight at all into who we might see at U15. Not ready to go deep diving into US Jr Nationals websites for their results.
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So while I did not explicitly say this in the write-up, this was a game where I expected a double digit win. And we saw scores from the M-14 / Hoop Dream "battle" with a 35 point margin, so heading into this I was thinking not about the win but the final margin. If this was close, M-14 was going to give us the business.
No worries on that front. I was once again scoring the game, which largely prevented me from watching a very close M-14 / Rockets game on the adjacent court. But AP's team rolled to a 56-17 win. Pretty much everyone got healthy in this game after a frustrating earlier game. It sounds like Hoop Dreams was in similar boat to us with a bunch of players in their first tournament of the year, with a group that had not previously played together. But there was a talent gap, as Hoop Dreams lost every one of their games by 30+. Their head coach did them no favors having them in this bracket, considering that there were two good teams in the division below ours.
For AP, she again had 6-8 points and was lamenting an easy missed layup after the game. But there were a couple of pretty fun moments.
- matched up 1:1 with ball-handler about 2 feet beyond top of key, stripped the ball and went coast-to-coast for layup
- off a rebound, threw a bounce-back from her three point line to the opposite three point line, hitting a teammate in stride for a lay-up
I was pretty pumped about that assist. She makes a lot of simple passes in half court to create good shots, but also generates some highlights with outlet passes. This might have been her best one yet.
The assistant I mentioned earlier asked AP near the end of the game if she was OK coming out a little earlier so they could give some late run to another kid on the team. I've talked with AP about how starting does not matter that much in the overall scheme of things, particularly in these non-EYBL tournaments, but getting minutes late in close games is where you know that you've earned trust. We got affirmation on that front in our showdown with M-14 the following morning.