AAU Nationals, Cocoa Beach Part 3

Game 2, 6pm
Venue: Melbourne Central Catholic High, home of the Hustlers. Somehow that doesn't seem like an appropriate team name...
Opponent: Quasars from NC

This was a hard-fought, competitive game. We were up at the close of the first quarter, but Quasars made a second-quarter run to take a significant lead. Things got a little excited in the second half, and as everyone knows I can't manage to take pictures when things get too excited.

We switched to street-style man-to-man one-on-one basketball in the second half. This bothered me a lot, and was part of the reason I was too excited to get pictures. I wasn't avoiding pictures in protest, it's just my blood pressure was up. Every possession seemed to be one-on-one dribble and heave. No rebound, sometimes the ball went in. Still we recovered to within 5 (3?) but suffered a technical foul on a player--cause was not evident from the stands, and a pair of technical fouls and ejection on the coach. I believe that you can defend the call of the first bench technical (although in this tournament, I would have advised a stern warning instead) but even an impartial tournament official concedes that there was no reason whatsoever for the second technical/ejection. This is another disappointment with the way the game was managed by the officials. I believe the game was very likely to be lost, but the players were capable of bringing it to that conclusion, and none of the technical fouls had anything to do with the gameplay itself. So a tight game, 5 point spread, under a minute to go, was bloated to a 12-point spread due to the technical foul shots hit, with about half a minute to go.

It took a long time to leave the venue, and as always a long drive back to the hotel. We got in at quarter after midnight. Another chance tomorrow...