Yellow's Game

Jungle Cat Yellow's Saturday game did not provide a very good barometer for the team's progress, as the Cats' counter-attack gave them an easy 5-0 lead through one quarter, and the game ceased being a contest. The Cats slowed things down from that point on, but did have some difficulty running their 2-meter offense smoothly.

Problem areas in the half-court offense involve some of the fundamental areas of the game: 1) balance and spacing in the umbrella offense, 2) awareness of the 2-meter's position and where he wants the ball, 3) passing away from from pressure.

The first two problems areas can be improved upon with better communication from the 2-meters. You guys (2-meters) have to understand that you are the "captains" of the offense whenever you take it upon yourself to be the focal point of the offense. But this does not mean that only 2-meters are allowed to communicate! It also will help to develop language that everyone will understand during the game, e.g. "reverse the ball" might mean that the 2-meter is set up on the side of the pool opposite the ball, and we need to move the ball to that side in order to get the ball into 2-meter. Using a person's name is the best way to get that person's attention, and "weak" tells a teammate that someone is open cross-goal with an opportunity to score, as opposed to "ball," which is one of five words my one year old nephew knows, because, like all of you Cats, he wants the ball for reasons all his own.

The third problem area will be improved upon if players will begin to move on offense, especially with the use of picks (2-1's and 4-5's). One of the "rules of passing" that I once learned is that you don't pass to a person who is not moving. There are, of course, obvious exceptions to this "rule," but the lesson is that a player should be moving away/releasing from pressure when he receives the pass - this makes the next pass that much easier. If your movements are coordinated - and we will go over this in future practices - we should not have to force wet passes into the corner or up against the wall, but instead will be able to move the ball freely with dry passes, and save our 2-meters a lot of wrestling time.

Final point: in the fourth quarter, when we are winning by a lot of goals, we want the game to end. This doesn't mean that we stop playing hard or that we allow ourselves to get sloppy. It just means that we use as much of the shot clock as possible, and once we are under 30 seconds in the game (or under a couple minutes, for that matter), we should be content to let the clock expire. When games drag on with multiple unnecessary goals, nothing good can come of it, from our perspective. And, as we saw on Saturday, if gives a thuggish player more opportunities to antagonize, harass and bully his opponents, and turn the game of water polo into something it isn't.

-Coach Hayes