Raffles Institution vs Ngee Ann Secondary (62-63)

Raffles Institution vs Ngee Ann Secondary (62-63)


This was the 5th friendly game that we played so far and this one was against Ngee Ann Secondary. The game was played at Ngee Ann Secondary School.

Due to the fact that there was no scoreboard, nor scorekeeper, nor timekeeper present during the game, the game was played by 15 minute quarters. The coach of Ngee Ann Secondary would record the time using a stopwatch and would shout "last ball" after the time had expired. The score on the other hand, was kept by an application that we have been using for the past few games to record our players' and the team's stats.

The first half of this game was badly done as we opened up the game giving up way too many open and easy baskets to our opponents who had no problems knocking down their shots partly due to their home court advantage. Our team on the other hand was missing easy opportunities at the basket that we would have normally converted and could not buy a bucket from the perimeter. We only scored a mere 4 points throughout the whole first period and found ourselves trailing by as much as 16 points in the first quarter alone. A huge reason why we were so inefficient while Ngee Ann was efficient was that we committed a whopping 11 turnovers in the first quarter alone. This was largely due to their half court 1-2-2 zone defense and double teaming that we have not really seen all this year. We were unable to find a way to break it and there was no one near to help, resulting in many turnovers for us. At the half, we were still trailing by double digits.

Once the second half had commenced, we started to find a little bit of a groove as we were finally able to score on multiple possessions while getting stops on our side of the floor. We were also able to cut down on the amount of turnovers that we committed in the 3rd quarter. This allowed us to close the gap significantly by the time the fourth quarter came our way. By the end of the third quarter, we were only down by 7 points.

In the 4th quarter, we started to mount on a rally as we were able to string together multiple stops, and forcing numerous turnovers form our opponents. We also switched our 2-2-1 defense to Full court Man-on-Man and this confused Ngee Ann as they did not realise it for quite some time and continued doing the same moves that they would have done to break our 2-2-1. Hence, we continued to chip away at the lead before finally tying it at 49 all after fighting back from being down by a huge margin that we had accumulated in the first quarter. We then traded baskets for a period of time before we finally made 2 threes that stretched our lead to 6. However, their incessant offensive rebounding and our careless fouls underneath the baskets allowed them to have many free throw attempts during the late moments of the 4th. Despite all this, we were still clinging on to a 1 point lead of 62-61. It was at this moment that we heard the signal of "last ball". On the following possession, Ngee Ann had a shot at the basket but missed and the ball was tipped out of bounds off of them. But even though it was a dead ball, there was no indication that the game had ended by the referee. After we got possession of the ball but missed on their side of the court, the game had still not ended and they came back on offense and ran a play, eventually scoring a basket at the end. It was at this moment that the game was declared over and we had lost 63-62.

Although this was a very controversial win due to the fact that the previous 3 quarters all ended once there was a dead ball, perhaps we did not deserve this win due to our lack of taking care of the ball in the first quarter and failing to convert on many easy opportunities. While the outcome of the game is in question, it is still a friendly game and it is important that we take away as much as we can learn from this.



Improvements


First and foremost, taking care of the ball. We cannot expect to commit 11 turnovers in the first quarter and still expect to win the game. We even committed a total of 31 turnovers in the whole game. This is way to high and we definitely have to cut down on this to win more consistently. To cut down on these turnovers, we need to know how to manage on ball pressure and judge properly when to pass out of the double team and when to just drive the ball. We killed our dribble too many times during this game which resulted in us turning the ball over easily.

Next, we have to cut down on our fouls. We gave Ngee Ann too many opportunities at the free throw line and if we meet teams which can shoot free throws very well, it would be tougher for us to get a win. But still, we need to know how to draw a line between fouling unnecessarily and fouling necessarily to make them earn their points from the free throw line.

Also, we have to work on our outside shooting. In a way it is good that we are going to our opponents home court to play as we can get to use many different types of rings. This trains our ability to adjust our shots in the future. But for this game, we shot 18/41(44%) from 2pt range, 7/34(21%) from 3pt range, and 5/13(38%) from the free throw line. We can definitely work to improve our percentage from 2pt range, but what really needs to improve is our 3pt shooting percentage and free throw percentage which are just awful. We must shoot with CONFIDENCE.

Lastly, our defense was horrible in the first quarter as we were unable to stop inside penetration and allowed way too many easy layups for the opponents. We have to COMMUNICATE much better on defense but also have to do the same on offense. Basically, talking makes playing much easier and also can take our mind off of being nervous or tired.


Strengths


Our fighting spirit. Though we were down big in the first quarter, we never gave up and continued to come at them throughout the rest of the whole game. We eventually came back to take the lead and even though the score reflects that we lost by 1 point, we definitely showed them that we would not concede to defeat until the final buzzer sounds.

We managed to do well on the boards today again, grabbing a total of 35 rebounds. (18 off, 17 def). We outrebounded them because of the height advantage that we had over them. This played a big part in our comeback as we could get multiple possessions and more scoring opportunities.




Our next friendly game would be coming up soon, but till then, stay tuned.