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The World of Georic 1989-Present

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Mandatory Basketball Rant - Winter 2022-23 - Week 8

 Two and weeks left in the scholastic calendar, two weeks left in Millie's leagues, and AAU is staring us in the face.

Maja:   Two basic games against Pittston and Tunkhannock.  As Maja's the last line of defense in the press and the first line of defense is usually creating turnovers her stat lines have been weak, but she's out with the A-team.  It always begs the question, with her friend returning from injury and lighting the other teams up with her shooting, would Maja benefit from some time running the B-squad and generating opportunities for those girls?  The coach is known to tweak with the 4th and 5th starters, but I guess Maja's been a rock out there for him and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. 

Just in case it starts raining 3's 

Millie: The Wolfpack had another 30-point within the Schuylkill League.  It's their fun league to do together before AAU kicks in.  Sunday night was a different story.  The Wolfpack ended their regular season against Millie's Mountain Top team on Sunday, and it was a bit more than advertised.

After trading foul shots, the Wolfpack went on an 8-0 run, followed by a 7-2 run.  Then Mt Top slowly began to dominate the boards for good stretches of the games, remembering they had two girls taller than any Wolfpack player.  Ultimately, the running clock (league rule) was too much to overcome the deficit, and they lost their second game in the last 50 weeks, 31-27. Individual stats were lopsided to two players, but the fact that 21 out of 27 points had an assist attributed to them was pretty significant.  Of course, that means their nine offensive rebounds (versus 13 Wolfpack) were insignificant since they didn't generate any offense.  

To add insult to injury the father of Mt Top's center was bad mouthing Wolfpack players while on the bench, players, mind you that his daughter played with during AAU.  There are rumblings that she won't be returning to the AAU program, relying on a tenuous arrangement with an NYC club, which is a huge deficit I don't think the program can react to and be competitive at 6th grade play. 

Local Rec League:  For the first time ever, playoffs started in January.  The 11-teams in the 3rd/4th grade boys division will require four whole weeks of double elimination basketball before the championship weekend.  Outside of paying a few refs for games that weren't scheduled (We only used four out of six time slots, and none of our byes could play exhibition), the games went off without a hitch.  To be honest, working scoreboard for the3rd/4th and 5th/6th girls games garnered ultra-competitive games moving into their playoffs. The complaints are pouring in and all negotiating with these coaching terrorists will do is embolden them.   Now if we can only get some confirmation on the pizza parties for the little ones, before winter plays, spelling bees, and snow days screw those up.

7th/8th Grade:  The calm before the storm, the teams had their second confidence boost of the season, playing Bear Creek Charter again, to 24-9 and 35-15 wins respectively.  Everybody got significant playing time, the usual suspects did not get high scorer on their teams, and even the girls deep in the bench made some nice plays.  As the Jr High parents have been the volunteers at the concession stand for home games, I've answered a ton of questions and set up text and e-mail groups to forward any training, try-out, or practice opportunities.

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