Week 10 Storytelling

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. 

Basketball 

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)