Mandatory AAU Basketball Fall 2023 Rant - Weekend #3

 A third weekend of AAU is down, only one more to go.

This weekend sent Millie’s team into the vaguely described land known as Central Jersey.  Somewhere between Princeton and Asbury Park is the Sportika Complex.  Imagine My Big Greek Wedding was a sports movie, and it would be played at Sportika (You know... the Greeks invented basketball)  The last time the program ventured down this way it was a total sweep for all the girl’s team, so much so that people pondered playing the girl’s teams up for the remainder of that fall, and the then 8^th grade not only did, but wreck a few varsity divisions in the process. 

Even better than a questionable schedule of opponents was the actual schedule itself.  Nothing like driving 150+ minutes for an 8am game.  The girls went down with their mother Friday night, but I had a more ingenious (and cost-effective) way.    

After Maja’s Junior Varsity game on Friday, I would drive down to Easton to visit my Mom, stay the night and only pull off 90 minutes to get to Sportika. 

Throw in one fun complication:  Mepacon was occurring this weekend right down the road from my Mom’s.  A quick recalculation and I could at least stop into the con site, say hi to some friends, since the game schedule would complicate things on Saturday and Sunday.  More on that in a forthcoming Mepacon review.

No matter what folks might say driving towards New York City at 6am on a Saturday was a pleasant, if  it weren't for the increasingly harsher downpours the further into New Jersey I went, by the time I fully turned south and passed Rutgers' stadium in Piscataway, there was so much water, I thought some magnet fisherman were going find me in the car in thirty years.   As the sun finally emerged as I reached Sportika, I refilled coffee at the Wawa next door and ventured into.... a schedule change?

When I left for my Mom's the day before Millie had the unenviable schedule of 8am and 2pm games against some second tier competition.  Sometime during that drive, the 2pm game became 10am, against Team Sharpe's 7A team, a quite worthy opponent, and our 8am opponent was NEPA NXT.  

We drove 3 hours to play an 8am game against a team that's 20 minutes up the road from us.  But they were always a worthy opponent, so the Sportika curse might not have been lifted. 

Now I'm not sure, but I don't believe Millie's team would have won the game if the original schedule held.  It's was beyond 8am ugly, with selfish play, poor decisions, and when they did pass, I've seen more precision in drunken frat house ping pong.  NEPA did finally put all their good players from three teams into one, but even with the size difference, Millie's crew only lost by 8, 46-38.  

The 10am against Team Sharpe got a the advantage of the morning wake-up call and the arrival of a missing player, and that was barely enough, only securing the lead in the last four minutes, and winning 37-34.  

With a 1-1 record, they weren't mathematically eliminated from the 1 vs 2 championship game on Sunday, but looking at the lopsided schedule-making, it would involve one of the undefeated teams getting into a bus accident, by a crashing airplane, while a cruise ship was running aground.   

With an early day surprise, the girls went with their mom for the hotel and two days of shopping, while I moseyed on back to the Lehigh Valley, and actually paid admission to Mepacon.  

With a late (4pm) game, and no chance for the championship, I pondered doing extra stuff around the house, for Mom, but I simply picked up the leaf blower she wanted, tested that out, and grabbed more Wawa before I crossed the Delaware.  Millie's Aunt and Uncle were planning on stopping in from Philly, and I didn't want to make the adulting any more difficult.

What wasn't difficult was their game.  The usual Sportika type of team finally showed, and when they finally scored with 4:00 left in the first half, Millie's team was already up 35-2.   It's easy to do what your supposed to do against an inferior opponent, but it was nice to see everyone actually doing that after a season of issues.  They quadruple-checked the other final pool games, but the bus, airplane, and cruise ship were all going different directions.  

Now, no one stayed for the championship game, but the Team I labelled the Team Sharpe 7B team went undefeated, and ended up beating the NEPA NXT team 45-42 in the championship.  While they were quite competent, they also had the weakest overall schedule for the weekend, so perhaps they were better than everybody, perhaps the coach put some of the 7A girls on the roster (a big no-no, but NEPA was nowhere to be found when they played, so how would they know who was who?)

In two weeks, the Fall AAU ends in Spooky Nook, the same weekend as Fall-In!   I hope everyone considers it a tune-up for school ball, when they kicks off a week later.