Bellbrook graduation 2012
Fairfield Senior 2012 graduation
Kroger Aquatic Center opens
Home > Blogs > Springfield, Ohio High School Sports > Archives > 2009 > January > 22
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Ky. high school coach charged in player’s death
From the Associated Press:
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A Kentucky high school football coach was charged Thursday with reckless homicide in the death of a player who collapsed during a sweltering practice in a rare criminal case against a coach in a heat death.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: High School Football
Final score of girls game in Texas: 100-0
From the Dallas Morning News:
The final score of the high school girls basketball game was 100-0, and his team had the nothing. Still, a week later, Dallas Academy Athletic Director Jeremy Civello was chalking up the game in the win column.
“My girls never quit,” he said. “They played as hard as they could to the very end. They played with all their hearts at 70-nothing, 80-nothing and 100-nothing. I was really proud of them. That’s what I told them after the game.”
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: For your reading enjoyment..., Girls Basketball
Graham highlights from Flyin’ to the Hoop tourney
It may have taken me a few days, but I finally compiled some highlights from Graham’s victory.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment | Categories: Boys Basketball, Central Buckeye Conference, Graham High School
On this date in area sports history…
On this date, Jan. 22, 1999, the News-Sun published a story on how area basketball coaches — including former North coach Eddie Ford — handle last-second situations.
Published in the Jan. 22, 1999 edition of the News-Sun:
WHEN SECONDS COUNT … … TEAMS MUST PLAN LATE-GAME STRATEGIES.
By Matt Thompson, News-Sun Sports Writer
Nearly four years after the fact, Eddie Ford still replays the scenario over and over in his mind.
“Say you have 10 seconds left, you’re up by three and the other team has the ball,” Ford says.
“Now do you foul them, make them hit the one and one and get the ball back from them? Or do you play tough defense and make them shoot the high-pressure three?”
Back when this wasn’t a hypothetical and instead was the closing seconds of the first overtime of a 1995 regional final game between Ford’s Panthers and Cincinnati Oak Hills, Ford had his players hold back and play defense.
The result?
“Their guy nailed a 22-footer to tie the game,” he says, smiling slightly.
And though North did manage to eke out a 64-63 double-overtime victory, the situation serves to illustrate just how complicated a relatively simple game can get when the clock is running out and even the smallest decision can mean the difference between victory or defeat.
“Maybe next time,” Ford says, “I’ll try it the other way.”
This is the kind of thing basketball coaches think about when they’re mowing the lawn, when they’re buying groceries, or just lying awake in bed.
Do you foul or look for the defensive stop? Do you go with your go-to guy, or attempt to outsmart the opponent by sneaking the ball to someone else?
The first 31 minutes? Child’s play. That last minute? That’s when coaches really earn their paychecks.
Huddle up
Perhaps the most obvious characteristic of that last minute is it seems to last about as long as the rest of the quarter put together. Oh, sure, during the middle of the third quarter, coaches can rest assured there’s ample time to fix things later on, but as the margin for error grows ever slimmer, they tend to call a flurry of timeouts, checking defenses, drawing up plays, putting the freak firmly in control.
“We talk about how we want to play the situation,” said Kenton Ridge Coach Jeff Hobbs. “We talk about what we think’s gonna happen. Coaches play a lot of guessing games, We think so-and-so will take this shot,' orThey’ll be in this defense.’ ”
More often than not, coaches use that time just to make sure their players are all on the same page _ that one kid won’t be popping into zone while the rest of his teammates are matched up man-to-man, or someone else won’t take it upon himself to play hero with a dangerous three-point attempt, with his team up by one.
“You go over situations,” said Greenon’s Kris Spriggs. “If we’re shooting free throws, what do we do if there’s one make, two makes, or even no makes?”
And while the coaches talk, the players sweat, drink water and try to concentrate on what they’re being told.
“(Coach Ford) gets into it,” said North guard Vaughn Stephens. “You’re standing there, feeling your heart beating, sweaty palms, watching while he tells you what’s going on.”
The one universal, it seems, is that no matter the situation — winning, losing or tied — things must remain positive.
“You have to make the kids believe good things are gonna happen,” Hobbs said. “We’re always gonna get this stop, we’re gonna make these free throws.”
“You have to reassure them,” Spriggs said. “They have to have confidence in their ability.”
And of course, the luck of a bounce here or there doesn’t hurt, either.
Practice time
Coaches will still tell you most of their work is done in practice — even those late-game situations. Coaches dedicate a fair amount of practice time to preparing for those crucial, last-minute inbounds passes, or the ball movement that will get the basketball in the right hands with time still on the clock.
“As a coach, you hope you’ve done enough in practice so that when you get in that situation, the kids are prepared,” Hobbs said. “You hope the kids remember, we ran the same things over and over and over … now we get in a game, they remember how they ran that out of bounds play 20 times in practice.”
That said, there’s no replacement for true game experience, and this may be one area where the inequities between experienced and rookie players really come to the forefront.
North center Marcus Banta, for one, can remember when the idea of getting the ball with time running out got the butterflies going in his stomach.
Now, however, he says it’s business as usual.
“I’m used to it,” the senior says. “The first time it was close like that, I was scared … but I really don’t worry about it anymore. I know this team is good enough to pull it out.”
That kind of confidence _ in one’s team and one’s own abilities _ is vital when the game’s on the line.
“Some kids live for those situations,” said Spriggs. “They’d rather be the ones to say, I’m the one who lost or won the game.”
“It’s pretty rare,” Ford said of that trait. “But every year or so you have one person who at least says he wants the ball.”
“Those are the guys you want on your team,” Hobbs said. “The guys who want to make something happen.”
Foul time
Sometimes it’s not just baskets that you have to hit. In fact, the patented intentional-but-not-intentional fouling contest that populates the final minutes of close games sometimes presents as much of a challenge as hitting free throws.
To wit, how do you intentionally foul someone _ hoping they miss the resulting freebies and you get the ball back _ without getting called for an intentional foul, which gives the other team two shots and possession out-of-bounds?
“Usually I just come from behind, try to knock the ball out,” said Stephens. “You just don’t hit ‘em hard … but make sure the ref sees it.”
Have refs been known to miss fouls like that?
“All the time,” Stephens said, grinning.
Typically, coaches have at least an idea who’s the best and worst foul shooters on the opposing team. Even when stats aren’t available, you can study a player’s shooting form, gauge how they’ve done for the night, and figure out who you’d rather have shooting against you with the game on the line.
“You put it in the back of your mind,” Ford said. “Like a computer.”
And when it’s you on the line, having to make the shots? Just keep as cool as possible.
“I treat it just the same as the other free throws in a game,” said Banta, himself about a career 60 percent free-throw shooter. “I just concentrate on the basket.”
So which would you rather do, head into the last minute with a one-point lead, or trailing by one but coming up fast?
“You’d rather be in the lead,” said Ford. “But then, protecting a lead is always kind of hard.”
Ford’s assistant, Jim Scoby, suggests a third option.
“I’d rather be up by 30,” he said with a laugh.
The last shot
All coaches can really hope for in the end is one shot that can win his team the game. Whether or not that shot goes in has a good deal to do with luck. Whether or not that shot gets made in the first place, doesn’t.
“What you want to have is a situation where you can get it to the guy you want to get it,” Hobbs said.
Getting to that point takes all the savvy a coach can muster - and pass on to his kids.
“It’s a constant feeding practice,” said Spriggs. “You’re absorbing the game constantly and at the very end, it’s like looking over a menu … and you decide what to do.”
After that? Well, after that even the most controlling of coaches has to put his team’s chances into the hands of the fates, and hope for a gust of good fortune.
“Lots of it’s luck,” said Hobbs. “Hopefully you’ve gone over the right things … but then it’s better to be lucky than good.”
Ultimately, however, it’s a lot like in life — luck always seems to favor the well-prepared.
