Game Number One

And the season has started!  My winter basketball league is now underway. Our first game was last night and we closely pulled out a win.  The final score was 38-37 and it could have gone either way at the end.  Thankfully we managed to hold off a late surge from the opposing team.

Just by watching, you’d be able to tell that we’re all pretty rusty.  Shots were off, dribbling was sometimes sloppy, and our team dynamics definitely were not in sync, but part of the reason for that is we’ve never played together as a team before.  We’ve all played in the past, just not as a team.

Anyways, the first 5 minutes of the game were really rough.  I think there was a total of 3 points scored in that amount of time.  Things eventually got rolling, however, and we came into halftime with a 20-16 lead.  We had a strong showing coming out of halftime and put ourselves up by 6 when there was under a minute left to go.  A combination of our sloppy offense (I was responsible for one turnover) and a couple of good shots from the opponents let them slide back into the game.  It also didn’t help that we couldn’t make a free throw to save our lives.

In the end, though, we still won.  38 was a pretty low score, though.  Even high school girls basketball games sometimes score higher.  Personally I had an ok game.  There’s definitely room for improvement as I had a couple of turnovers and some dumb fouls, but I was surprised by the parts of my game that were still there.  I had 9 points, which isn’t exactly lighting up the scorebook, but if not for a couple of offensive rebounds and a steal, I’d have only had 3.  

I fired up 3 shots from behind the arc and hit 1.  Not terrible, but I should be hitting 2 out of every 3.  One basket I got from a steal that I took in for a layup.  The other four points came from two offensive rebounds I put back.  The odd part about that is I’m not even close to being the tallest guy on our team and the guys on the other team were at least as tall as me.  A little bit of luck to be in the right place at the right time always helps.

Well, let’s hope that the rest of the year gets better as we get going.  I know I have a lot of improving that I want to do and I’d like to get up into averaging double digit scoring every game.  I also wish that gym memberships around here weren’t so damn expensive so I could practice somewhere other than the outdoor court at the park in our subdivision.  It’s going to be snowed over pretty soon…  

What really matters is that I finally got back to playing some competitive sports here in Rochester.  Softball this last summer, basketball now, and hopefully volleyball in the winter/spring.  Man, I love sports.