"We like threes, but we love layups!"

Last night, our varsity opened play in our annual holiday tournament with a good performance against the Barrie School from Montgomery County. In the first half we did a nice job of using our defense to force the scrambled tempo that we want, and we were able to force a lot of turnovers in the backcourt. We also executed our zone offense sets very well, and we shot a sizzling 12 for 17 (71%) from behind the arc in the first half. Our hot shooting put the game away early, and we were up 60 to 19 at the half.

However, as a coaching staff, we were disappointed that we only got to the foul line eight times for the game. We have a lot of guys who can really shoot the three, but we have to be very careful about settling for threes -- especially contested threes. For our offense to truly "run on all cylinders" we have to have an attacking mentality and be able to get in the lane under control, "create bumps" and make good decisions with the ball. One of our goals in every game is to make more foul shots than the other team attempts, and we did not come close to accomplishing that last night. As Coach Walberg says, "We like threes, but we love layups." We need to continue to work hard in practice to instill that attacking mentality in our players.