Boys Basketball Game #11 Summary
Saints Fight Hard in Loss to Pacers in Season Finale
On Friday evening, our Salem A boys took on the Pilgrim Pacers who made the trip to Stillwater from Minneapolis. The Pacers, an extremely athletic and experienced team with four eighth graders, came into this game with an impressive conference record of 9-1. Leading up to this regular season finale, the focus in practice all week was taking better care of the basketball when facing aggressive defensive pressure. Throughout the week, our practices had both a fast-paced nature as always and a unique optimistic and enthusiastic environment. It was easy to tell our boys were pumped up to play in front of the home crowd one last time this season!
Even though the Pacers were obviously the more experienced, bigger, faster, and stronger basketball team, the remarkable resolve and togetherness of our Salem Saints enabled us put on one of our best performances yet this season. Although Pilgrim caused their fair share of turnovers with their superior length and anticipation, our ball handling, passing, and decision making were much improved from last week’s second half struggle against Greenfield. In talking to the team all week, the overall theme of my message was that in order to compete against Pilgrim’s suffocating defense, we needed to slow down our mindset and thought processes, while still matching the speed of an A team game by playing fast with our bodies. Although this is much easier said than done, when considering the challenging opponent we faced on Friday, I thought our young team did this about as well as anyone could reasonably expect. The huge improvement of our Saints throughout the entire season came to fruition in the first half, as we stayed competitive against one of the top teams in our conference (halftime score: 10-24). Even though Pilgrim’s rapid run n’ gun style turned the second half into a track meet that our Saints could not physically win (final score: 21-45), I am very proud of how hard our boys competed until the bitter end. Both assistant coach Neal Anderson and I feel strongly that this game was yet another positive step as we are ascending up the ladder of becoming a successful basketball team both next year and beyond!
On a statistical note, it was nice to see that the scoring breakdown in this game was much more balanced than usual. Our offensive contributions were spread out between seventh grader Griffin (8 points), eighth grader Houghton (6 points), and seventh grader David (3 points). Pilgrim easily won the free throw shooting battle, converting four of eight attempts (50%). Just like last week, our Saints left too many points at the foul line, converting only two of eleven attempts (18%).
This week, our Saints will travel to the Kennedy Activity Center in Bloomington to play in the first round of the TCLGSAL Tournament. Stay tuned as the official brackets will be sent home with the kids early this week!
