Outsmarted,
continued
They day of the game arrived and both teams showed up to
the Mustang Community Center, where they had settled on playing the game. The
time was 7:30 pm, the dust was settling as the teams took their place upon the
court with the championship of champions on the line. The Leaders of the New
School and the All-Stars met at half court to shake hands, but quickly those
friendly handshakes turned into game faces as both teams stared down the other
before tip-off. Everyone in the building could feel the tension of both team as
the game was about to start. The official walked to the center circle at half
court to do the tipoff to get the game started. He tossed the ball into the air
and the game began.
The All-Stars controlled the tip to start the game and
set up their dribble drive offense right out of the gates. This consisted of
dribbling into the center of the court and handing off to the next player
cutting over the top of them till you get deep enough in the paint for your own
shot or the defense helps down and you are able to find an open teammate for a
shot. The All-Stars did this until they found an opening when a post player
from the Leaders of the New School stepped up to help on the drive and this
allowed for them to pass over the top of the defense for an Alley-Oop. Over the
first ten minutes of the first half, both teams went back and forth trading
baskets. Everyone saw the contrast in styles between the two teams as the
All-Stars were getting all of their points either in transition or off of
athleticism and speed in their dribble drive offense. The Leaders of the New
School were getting all of their points in the half court using their motion
offense, which uses a lot of off the ball movement and pick-n-rolls to create
gaps in the defense.
But after the first ten minutes, the All-Stars started to
take over the rest of the half. Their athleticism was proving to be too much
for the undersized Leaders of the New School as they were jumping passing lanes
and trapping the guards off of pick-n-rolls to cause turnovers, which lead to
easy baskets. They built a 15 point lead going into halftime with the score
being 48-33 in favor of the All-Stars. The confidence level of the Leaders of
the New School had dropped below bearable. They were all bickering at each
other until one of them stepped in and stopped everyone. He spoke to all of
them and told them that they needed to stay together and that they were going
to come back to win the game.
The second half began and started off the same way the
first half ended with the All-Stars creating turnovers. This was allowing them
to score without having to run offense against a set half-court defense. Finally,
one of the players from the Leaders of the New School decided to pick up the
pace and put the team on his back. He got focused in mentally and things
started to click for him. This allowed for him to string together a few consecutive
baskets which put him in the groove. He put himself on the All-Stars best
offensive player. This stalled their offense, tremendously and stopped them
from scoring. The Leaders of the New School started to make their comeback by
chipping away at the lead, cutting it down from fifth teen points to ten points
to five points with two minutes left in the game.
Both
teams buckled down and the game got very intense as they traded basketball
after basket until the All-Stars went up by two with five seconds left in the
game. This was the Leaders of the New School last chance to save face and
defeat the All-Stars. They inbounded the ball and moved right into their
offense to get off the final shot, but they knew they wanted to go for the
three pointer to win the game. The point guard got to the right wing and waited
for the power forward to come up and set a screen for him to come off of, but
they trapped him off the screen and he was forced to pass it back to the power
forward. He squared up towards the basket and let his shot go, it seemed like
eternity as the ball was in the air and the horn went off as time expired. The
ball went through the goal and the Leaders of the New School had defeated the
All-Stars which ended their three years of going undefeated.
Author’s Note:
My
reading from this week was Apache: The Animals Race. All of the men came
together in a group to run a race to the edge of the world where a certain
pretty girl was living. The man who arrived to where she lived first would get
the privilege to marry her. They started running and Coyote gained a big lead,
far ahead of all the other animals. He kept his head on a swivel and kept
looking back as he ran along in the race. The men had formed into one running
behind the other. The Heron begun to run the race long after all of the other
animals had set out on their opportunity to marry the pretty girl. Somehow, he
caught up and passed the others as they ran along a slope. The Heron asked the
Mole where he was running to and the Mole responded by telling him about the
pretty girl. The Heron offered his back to the Mole to ride on as he passed all
of the other animals. The Heron finally caught up to where the Coyote was, far
ahead of the others. He passed by him and was coming close to the place where
the pretty girl live when he put the Mole down telling him, “Hurry up now,
run.”When the Coyote and the other men came running to where the Heron was, he
said to the rest of them, “What are you running for? Mole has already married
the girl.”
Bibliography: The Animals Race, P.E. Goddard (1911)
