U14 AND1 Tournament RI 61-21 Clementi Town

(Due to the bad weather the recent days, the other matches are postponed to a later date and this is considered the first match of the tournament.)

Today sparked off the U14 AND1 tournament! Our team arrived there early and we were much more warmed up compared to the other team, and we were determined to perform our best for the first match.

Probably due to first game jitters, we loss the tip-off at the start, and we let number 6 of clementi town have an easy layup in, starting off at a slight disadvantage. Worse still, during the first quarter our plays were run very poorly and it let to serious turnovers, especially from short corner our post passer. Fortunately, we made it up with good defense at the other end which led to good breakaway layups, and we crawled back into the game with a couple of finishes by our perimeter players, mostly Mingjun and Bao Kun.

Second quarter, a new set of players comprising of more sec 2s came in. With an obvious edge in fitness, we ran the fast-break well, with Wee Xuan scoring 3 easy to back-to-back baskets to widen the lead. We broke their defense down as we took advantage of their confusion during our play, though one of our players did not ran the play smoothly due to initial communication problems. However, even though we got through the lose defense, we did not finish everytime and it was sad to say most of our points came from either fast-break or low percentage jumpers. We finished the first half with a 20 points lead of 32-12.

Beginning of the second half our opponents came out with a full-court press. Though our play didn't run smoothly, a few good passes from Bao Kun found the open man at the other end which led to easy layups. Good defensive pressure also prevented our opponents from scoring at all in that quarter along and we ran on a 19-0 run in the third. Fourth quarter, we finished strong for the win, though we let our opponents score a couple of points here and there.

Today's match we were running our plays poorly and relying too much on fast breaks. Even during our fast-breaks we couldn't finish at the rims every time. If our opponents were as athletic as us and could get back every time we ran the fast-break, we would have to rely on plays to win and that would be disastrous for us. Relax, go home and have a good rest, and start praying that it wouldn't rain tomorrow.

MVPs:

(RI)

Bao Kun

Wee Xuan

(Clementi Town)

No. 14