Return to Pirate Boys' Basketball 1999-2000! Pirate Boys Basketball vs Steilacoom at the Playoffs! Saturday 03/04/00, up in Mount Vernon

Waiting in the wings. It's show time...

OK gentlemen, I want a good, clean fight: no hitting below the belt; when I say "Break" I want you to separate; at a knockdown I want you to return to your corner immediately..." Good luck, gentlemen.

We control the tip! Here we go!

And here, in a nutshell, is the whole game: I see five red jerseys and three white, and we're gettin' swarmed! Basically you've got three-on-one. Steilacoom's got two guys between the ball and the basket, and two other guys converging on the ball from outside...

And five-on-two. One guy's just pushed Jay deep onto the baseline, and although Jay gets past, there's two guys waiting in the key for him...

End of the first: down four.. (we're "Home")

The second quarter was so exciting I didn't get any real usable pictures..

(The lighting was *real* poor and I couldn't use "sports mode" so I had a lot of blurry shots...

But we climb back in: this can be done! At the half: up by one!

But the same deal in the third: here, five-on-three. Calvin with a nice jump shot, with his usual good elevation, but he seemed very conservative and very tight. All the Pirates seemed very tight.

Five-on-three.

Look at their spacing: one guy dead center in the key; one guy out on each block; and two other guys out high but still in the paint. OK: so Chris gets by the guy out on the left block, but we're completely blocked-out for a rebound and no one else is anywhere close to the action.. We had *no* rebounding...

End of the third and down by 14...

A bright spot! Good job, girls!

And so it went. At the final buzzer, down by 11.. Let's go home, Fred...

So, something happened along the way, somewhere between beating Foster by 18 on 02/24/00 and losing to Nooksack Valley on 02/29/00.

We were real conservative, real tight, and real tentative in this last game (vs Steilacoom) that I saw.

I don't know what the ref'ing and/or foul situation was in the Nooksack Valley game, but something somewhere made the boys real tight.

In this last game we had (whine whine whine...) some definite imbalance in the foul calls: we were getting called for stuff *I* couldn't see, and Steilacoom was swarming and doing a lot of over-the-back and a lot of reach-ins with impunity...

(Whine whine whine...)

But something really had an effect on the boys to make them so tight...

We also had a lot of rainbow passes, like VIJB stuff, and a lot of turnovers generally.

And no rebounding.

And not much in the way of shot selection...

And Steilacoom, to their credit, played a good trap/full-court-press defense that slowed the Pirates and got us into a back-court/front-court game that we couldn't figure out...

So what do you expect, with all of that?

We lost!

Here's the write-up in the T-N-T:

Mount Vernon -- Saturday 03/04/00

"Not only did Steilacoom High take fifth place in the Class 2A
Bi-District boys basketball tournament to advance to state this week,
but the Sentinels got some revenge on Vashon in their 59-48 victory
Saturday at Mount Vernon.

Last year, Vashon defeated Steilacoom in the loser-out game,
49-48, so this victory was extra sweet.

The Sentinels led 13-9 at the end of the first quarter,
but the Pirates rallied back and took a one-point lead heading
into the half, 27-26.

Steilacoom put the game away in the third quarter with a 21-6 run
and Vashon couldn't get back within striking distance.

Steilacoom's Brian Ford scored 26 points, notched four assists,
and was named to the district all-tournament team. Teammate
Kendrick Holley added 11 points and grabbed a game-high 15 rebounds.

Jesse Davis and Calvin Ento combined for 36 of Vashon's 48 points,
but it wasn't enough to defeat, Steilacoom which claimed
the fifth and final state berth."

So after Jesse and Calvin, we had 12 points...

Return to Pirate Boys' Basketball 1999-2000! Pirate Boys Basketball vs Steilacoom at the Playoffs! Saturday 03/04/00, up in Mount Vernon

Waiting in the wings. It's show time...

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