Sunday, December 7, 2008

Dealing with Tough Losses

Well...we had our first freshmen game yesterday against the Forest Lake sophomores and it didn't go so well. We ended up losing by fifty!!! OUCH! Truthfully, they were much bigger, faster, and more physical than we were and it showed. My guys were scared and played like that in the first half as we were down 35 by halftime. In warm ups, most of their shots were air balls or hit the backboard hard, I had to giggle a little bit. But in the second half, they calmed down and played slightly better.

I think in a hard loss like this, you have to keep things in perspective and use this situatiion as a learning experience for your guys. Freshmen seem to listen much better once they have gotten a beatdown laid upon them! What could we have done better? What did we do right? I make sure ina loss like this to not beat up the guys, and to find some positives because they already know they didn't play as well as they should have. So my plan is to come back to practice positive, full of energy, and ready to correct what went wrong. It also reinforces my ideas that freshmen basketball is all about player development and not about winning and losing. THat is the message I delivered to my tom after the game and the message I will continue to go with!

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