Valentine's Day Massacre

That title may be a little harsh for 7th grade girls basketball, but it totally fits.  You see yesterday was the final game of the season for Peach's team and the girls had gone undefeated all season.  The closest game was maybe 6 or 8 points (more on that later) but the rest of the games were double digit wins and the game before the finals was a 32 point blow out.  So basically all season the team had played the 10 girls on the team at some point every game and for most of the games the substitutions were quite liberal.  Now my opinion on the subject is that junior high teams and high school teams should sub frequently if they want to win... if you have the players obviously.  It is unlikely that a team has 10 players that are all of an equal level, but honestly there are probably about 2 or 3 that should get more minutes and the next 4 or 5 should be subbed early and often.  Also at this point in a season a coach should have developed a rotation of subs - basically if you have 1 or 2 people that you want to sub infrequently you have found a way to sub them at the end of quarters or at the beginning of quarters to get them some extra rest and the other players can develop some chemistry or a style with the big gun on the bench.  Because if you don't the team is going to get tired and you eventually lose due to attrition, and it takes one heck of a coach to pull the trigger for a sub with 3 minutes left in the game when they haven't subbed much before that, and one heck of a player to step into that situation cold.  The alternative is that you use timeouts to generate rest for the player, both of which Peach's team didn't do and resulted in a 34-31 lose to a very good team.  But a team that didn't play everyone, but did sub frequently with 7 girls.  Peach played for maybe 3 -4 minutes in the game out of 24.  Now let me say one other thing about subbing at the end of the season.  I think a lot of people think that as the season goes on you get more and more conditioned to play, but I think it is the opposite.  In the early season you focus a lot on running and conditioning, but as the season goes on, it becomes about practicing plays or game planning for a team and the practices become much more focused on strategy and most of the running a player will do is in the games.  So if you have played without subbing up to this point all the sudden loading players up with minutes in a game is going to backfire spectacularly.  This is how I envision Sampson's team losing this year in either the sectional or district, because we haven't developed bench players, and there are 2 guys that never get subbed unless they are in foul trouble. Any who, back to the massacre...
So Peach's team hasn't lost all year and most of the wins have been by double digits including one by 60 points.  Her team has probably shot more 3's than Sampson's team in less games.  Now traditionally with junior high teams if they are running the table and throwing up big point totals then they are probably pressing and getting layups, but Peach's team has pressed probably less than 5% of the time and plays almost exclusively man to man.  Most of  the time if a pressing team gets beat it is because the other team can handle the pressure and eventually get a layup on the other end because the pressing team is badly out of position against good ball handling teams, so a team that can dominate in the half court and dissect presses is hard to beat, which is what I would call Peach's team.  They also can go 8 deep, (qualifier here, the top girl is one of the better 7th grader's I have seen, boy or girl after that one girl can shoot, one can handle the ball, and the next two are taller, but the first 3 off the bench are versatile, short but fast and a good rebounder, strongest girl on the team) and have been giving more time to the 9 girl at the end of the year so the team is deep.  For this game though the coach didn't sub any in the first quarter or the last quarter, and only subbed once in the second and third for about 3 or 4 minutes total.  The bottom 3 starters have not experienced this kind of work load and to put them in that situation in a championship game was not well thought out.  If you play a certain way (and most of the time after 4 or 5 minutes it was sub 3 girls out) and win your games you should stay with that style and if you win, then you win playing your game, but if you lose, then you lost playing how you know how to play.  The girls didn't get that chance and when they were up 13 to 6 in the second quarter it really had that feel of "if we don't start subbing we are going to get tired and lose"... and that is exactly what happened.  The other thing that cost them is - if you aren't going to sub, you need to use timeouts to get players rest.  We left with 4 timeouts in our pocket.  Another thing they could have done was play zone.  While her team didn't normally play zone, it could have been very affective against the team they were playing.  They used a lot of screening action and back cuts to score that could have been neutralized, plus I don't know that they were a great shooting team, so packing in a defense and making them score over the top could have been very effective, especially after we had the lead.  A zone also helps your team rest, which if you aren't going to sub is kind of important.  But we didn't play any zone, and at the end of the game the girls were getting turned completely around, and couldn't find the ball on defense.
I felt really bad for Peach, because she is honestly one of the best 5 basketball players on her team, but she isn't fast so she gets over looked, even though she is a good passer, dribbler, and rebounder.  I understand coming in the first day of practice, looking at a team and deciding who the best 5 girls are and those are your starters, but if one person has a good day, or one has a bad day and you are too rigid to change your evaluation, then that limits you as a coach.  There was absolutely no way, that you can go a whole season and not see this.  Time will tell but I guess if Peach ever wants to have a shot, it isn't about basketball, it is about how quick they are.  Dumb.  If a kid has a skill set to a sport (good batter or pitcher in baseball, dribbling/passing/shooting in basketball) being super quick isn't the most important thing.  Good technique can make up for a lack of quickness or height in basketball too, but those have to actually be coached.  One last thing, just a coincidence maybe,  but Sampson's 7th grade team lost in the championship too.  They came back and won it all the next season and only lost one game...  No pressure kid.