Game 1: We take the court against Haslett 3; we haven’t faced them before BUT one of the engineer’s I work with has a son on this team. We’ve been talking basketball all year and comparing notes….I know that we solidly beat teams that Haslett 3 has lost to. So, hoping for good things.
We won 35-25….pretty much held a ten point lead from the first quarter on. Christopher had by far his best game of the year; he had 10 points (as you can see above and had way more than 10 rebounds (in the 1st quarter alone he was at 6…) on his way to his first double-double. They had one big guy and Christopher just outclassed him the entire time. A good start, and we continued on in the ‘winner’s’ bracket to….
Game 2: Against Haslett 2. Some shocking results so far in the tourney; the other Okemos team lost and lost again; they’re gone. The Holt team that beat us, lost and lost again; they’re gone. So, we think things might be looking good for our tourney title chances…..
Not. Lost 24-21. Christopher played ok, he had 3 points, a ton of rebounds, and every single time we took him out of the game we got absolutely crushed on the boards….he had to go back in.
Our leading scorer all year (you can see him at the top of the chart above) had two points and fouled out. and we still were down by one with less than a minute to play. We inbound the ball down by one, we get the ball inside to Christopher who is fouled while taking a shot; he gets two free throws with about 40 seconds left. I look over at Suzanne in the stands and she has her hands together with this anguished look on her face; Cpher has gone 1 for 2 from the line during this game.
Missed them both. Haslett gets the rebound, and we’re chasing the lead now and they made two free throws and that was it.
Want to be clear here that it certainly wasn’t Cpher’s fault we lost….we made some just crazy boneheaded plays that led to some easy shots for the other team and I don’t even want to talk about the foul at the end of the first half (they threw up a heave at the basket from behind half court….the refs call a foul and give the kid three shots…..he made one, but hey, that one point counted).
The tournament was at Haslett; I was very surprised (although I guess I shouldn’t have been) at the amount of noise the Haslett fans and parents made during Cpher’s free throw attempts to try and get him off of his game…..I guess I expect it in High School and on up, but, was surprised at just how much of it there was for the 4th grade trainer league.
What’s Next: Drop into the ‘loser’s’ bracket tomorrow for a 10 am against Haslett 2 (we didn’t play any of the Haslett teams in the regular season; we’ve gone 3-3 in the tourney). The early scouting knows one thing…they are the biggest team we’ve faced…easily three kids bigger than everyone else on our team BUT the big guy. Christopher will certainly be logging a lot of minutes tomorrow morning. Need to win four straight times tomorrow to win the title; a tough chore.
