C Division Nationals Round 1 Game 2

Raffles Institution vs Unity Secondary (46-56)

In this game against Unity, we fought very hard, knowing that we had to win this game in order to have a chance of advancing to the second round. In the first half, we were playing great basketball, shooting with confidence and putting in effort at the defensive end of the floor and fighting for rebounds. The score was very close in the first, 11-10 Unity up, but we were able to fight back in the 2nd quarter, taking a 7 point lead 20-13 at one point in the second. However, they were able to close the half well and in the third quarter, we constantly allowed them to get easily layups against us and kept fouling them, sending them to the line numerous times in the opening minutes and this allowed them to take the lead. While they were scoring with efficiency, we on the other hand were struggling with our offense, not getting a basket until mid way through the 3rd quarter. We allowed them to make quite a number of their threes and have to do a better job closing up on them on defense. The main thing that made our offense struggle in the 3rd and 4th quarters was their defense where they were constantly pressuring the ball man and denying players the ball, finishing up the possession by successfully boxing out and making sure that we had no second chances. After snatching the rebound, they used the speed of their two key players #7 and #5 to rush down the court for a fastbreak layup. This is definitely one point that we can learn from them. This defense made us panic a lot as they had their hand in our face when we got the ball almost all the time and in the end, we made a lot of rushed and bad passes to our teammates, and were impatient, not waiting for the offense to set up and not looking for open teammates. We still have to remember to call our teammates name if when we want the ball or are open as sometimes they might not be able to see us and thus it will be up to us to alert them. They eventually pulled away in the fourth as they won the game by 10 points in the end. Although we lost this game, we definitely learned a lot and gained lots of experience that we can apply to our game further down our basketball road.