Orange 10 - Parkway 8

Parkway was short a few players to start the game, so we lent them a quartet of P-South All-Stars for the game (Auinbaugh, Champion, Brett Gleason and Patrick Gleason). Those four have played a lot together both as Jungle Cats and as Patriots and I knew they would really give the rest of Orange a good game.

I did not take down the end of quarter scores, but the game was tight throughout. In general, our game plan was to get the ball down to a wing and get a positive set through driving, which we had been working on the last few practices. The first half was brilliant in that regard as Michael Bowers was a driving and setting machine, generating a ball side drive on nearly every possession he was in the water for. Elsewhere on offense, Zach Smith, Michael Sigman and Darrian Castro did a great job creating position and communicating when and where they wanted the ball. For the most part, I was impressed with the counter-attack as goalie Pat Archer had little trouble finding a teammate winging out on every counter. Defensively, Pat Archer did a great job communicating with 2M defenders Justin Jellinek and Michael Tanner. The perimeter defenders stayed in the passing lanes for the most part and we forced a lot of bad passes, leading to easy steals.

Points to work on would be very similar to the things Yellow needs to work on: communication and getting back to defense. EVERYONE in the pool needs to talk more and the always appropriate "if you aren't in the play, go the other way." Not only does the phrase rhyme, it's a very good lesson for the boys to learn. Too often, we watch the play instead of watching our man. We need to anticipate when the counter-attack is about to happen.

For this game I went with a 3-star system...
- 3rd Star: Michael Tanner - solid in guarding Parkway's best threat, Jake Auinbaugh, and was part of my second favorite play of the game, a give and go with Michael Bowers (who deserves honorable mention for his performance) that generated a great inside water shot for Tanner
- 2nd Star; Justin Jellinek - guarded Auinbaugh a bit tighter than Tanner did, often preventing Jake from wanting to go into set. Justin had his hips in the passing lanes often and never got beat to the goal
- 1st Star: Zach Smith - was great at both ends and was by far the best offensive player in the pool. My favorite play of the game was Zach getting a steal from the point by playing passing lanes, sprinting to the cage with two guys coming down his back, doing a pop-shot which generated a 5M penalty shot when he got clobbered and unselfishly allowing Michael Sigman to take the 5M.

Special thanks to the P-South All-Star Quartet for being good sports and playing hard for the opposing team. Thank you Jake, Kenny, Brett and Patrick!

-Coach Tom