Special Olympics Tournament

This weekend I was at a Special Olympics basketball tournament. I coached our team - The Black Wolves. The name was a team decision. Do wolves even come in black? I'm not sure they do, but I guess it sounded menacing or cool or something to my team, so that is what won.

Speaking of winning, we didn't. Actually we won one game and lost one game. But the losses count much more than the wins, so it just didn't feel that great. We won the first game easy 22-6.

We lost the second game 14-12. I thought we might get clobbered. The team we played had scored 38 points in their last game, which is a lot for a Special Olympics team. But we played a masterful defense which I'm thinking is due to great coaching. They had a guy literally head and shoulders above anyone on our team.

It quickly became apparent their strategy was to lob it to him and he would make a shot right under the basket. I knew if he got the ball we couldn't stop him. So I had my guards put a lot of pressure on the player bringing up the ball. They had to make a long pass to get it to him. A lot of the time it didn't get there and we intercepted it. We were down by four with a minute to go. We scored. Down by two. We stopped them and brought the ball down for a final possession in which we missed a half dozen shots at the basket.

I tell myself its only a game. My team wasn't too upset. I'm pretty sure several didn't know we had lost until I told them after the game. Oh, well. Everyone on my team scored at least one basket that day. That is great, because we don't shoot well. One practice we did lay-ins in which we went five minutes without making a single one. I have a player that shoots it with some kind of spin on the ball I can't even describe. We once scrimmaged cross court and one of my players shot at a basket that wasn't one of the two we were using in the game.

So we were offensively challenged and I guess I should feel good we played as well as we did. Later I thought I should have watched for 3 second violations by their big man. I'm pretty sure he just camped out there. But its tough to keep track of all the violations at a Special Olympics game. The refs have to let a lot of stuff go. For example, I haven't seen that much traveling since I was at the airport (bazinga). So, that might have made a difference. But our shooting percentage is about 5 to 10 percent, so it might not have mattered anyway.

So no gold medal for us this year. Last year, we played in the gold medal game and lost in triple overtime. And since every loss I've ever had continues to haunt me, I'll just add these to the list.

Next year - gold medal. Count on it.