This game presented one part of what I like about basketball and sports in general. Sooner or later those not willing to give up will become better and present a good competition or even come over the top. Also – if you get to the top and want to stay there there can’t be one day you let your standards drop, others are coming for you. Competition isn’t sleeping. One of the things I dislike about this season is that I’ve taken too much on my shoulders and meanwhile I can present the development of all my teams it isn’t the kind of development I would like to see as a Coach. The simple reason behind this is that there is not enough time to prepare according to proper standards for every team I am coaching, so some of the stuff must overlap or I just tend to oversee it and implemet later as I would have normally. That said I like to see others put in a good workload on their development and keep moving forward – we need that competition that makes us sweat and check the reality.

In the first game against München Ost 2 Hellgirls dominated the playing field and took the win on the road with onse sided 25 to 97. Though, there is always the thing with the second teams in the clubs. There is also the first team and that usually means that they also pull up the following teams. Coaches learn, get mentored and develop their players to bring them to the level of first team, so at least some of them get the chance to play there. This was the case, headache for us.

First Quarter

I started off like I usually like to do – starting five consisted only from our U14w girls. It turned out that München Ost 2 really had improved a lot since our last meeting at their home and game turned out very interesting and tense. Up to minute 5 we managed to score only two baskets meanwhile our opponents scored four. On the minute 5 I did some rotations and it changed the score in favor for us. Hellgirls scored some more and we took the lead on minute 8 with 11 to 10. After that I put in some of my most experienced players and they managed to stop the offense of our visitors in Hellenen Dome and score some more points in our favor. First quarter turned out good for us with +9 points, 21 to 12.

Second Quarter

As a result of showed strength in first quarter I awaited that this won’t be another game of +30 points, but what I didn’t anticipate is that we would not score. Second quarter was amazingly unsuccessfull scoring-wise for both teams. For first seven minutes in the second period scored only München Ost 2, they put up 7 points and shrinked our lead to only 2 points, 21 to 19. Hellgirls just couldn’t put the ball through the ring! After switching it a little bit up, we managed to overtake the iniciative for the remaining three minutes in the first half and played good defense, stopping offense from our visitors. It resulted in some steals and fastbreaks and we could put some points on the scoreboard. In the second quarter both teams achieved only 15 points together, 8 for Hellgirls and 7 for München Ost 2 respecitvely. We still had a little advantage over our opponents when going in halftime break: +10 for Hellgirls, 29 to 19.

Third Quarter

I like the Coach from the opposing team. He kept his positive the whole game and pushed his team to the limits. Made our life hard, we like hard. Meanwhile the scoring of München Ost 2 got better in the third period ours stayed okayish from what we are used to. For the first four minutes in the second half, scoring was done by our visitors and we could give an answer only at the minute 24. Though, the situation didn’t get much better and we kept losing the baskets. At the minute 27 we stand only with 1 point remaining over our rivals and our Captain made much needed three point shot at the minute 29 to keep us in the game, then the teams exchanged some more baskets and München Ost 2 had burned down our 10 point lead to only 4 points after the third quarter, München Ost 2 took this quarter with 11 to 17 in their favor, score 40 to 36 and Hellgirls leading still.

Fourth Quarter

Now, I wasn’t feeling like having much headache and wanted to finish the game in our favor. So I chose to play mostly those who proved able to bring the energy in the game as for the first three quarters team lacked the energy, heart and power to fight back properly. They slept in, so I took the ones who were willing to change that and defend our Hellenen Dome. For half of the team that day on the bench it clicked and we could make a good fourth quarter. We started off by scoring some two baskets and giving just one in the first three minutes. Still bad scoring from our side, but you gotta take what the team gives you in days like this. Hellgirls managed to keep their defense running good all fourth quarter and scored twice as much as our visitors from München Ost. This brought us the win in the fourth with 16 to 8 and in the game 56 to 44. Good game and team development by our visitors – München Ost 2! Still, our Hellgirls managed to hold their line in Hellenen Dome despite having a bad day.

Summary

Days like these is just something you can’t ignore. My girls didn’t show the WILL to fight today. I really hope this was a one time thing. We surely need to work on our attitude and willpower more. This will require job on my side and restructure our trainings to fit this need to train energy and will. Also, as the season is slowly coming to an end, there is a need to plan for the next Season which will bring much higher competition. Skillwise and mentalwise. We can expect that by going in with wrong mentality will bring chaos and needlessly lost games. This can’t be the case, it can’t be that others want to win more than we do. It’s mentalgame crunch time for our U16 Hellgirls.

~Coach Valts

ONE TEAM. HELLENEN GO.