B Division South Zone Bball: Round 1 Game 1--- Raffles Institution vs ACS International (50-9)

Raffles Institution vs ACS International (50-9)

Points by Quarter:

                              1st-------2nd-------3rd-------4th
Raffles Institution    19---------6---------18--------7
ACS International    0--------- 8----------1--------0


Our season started off with a breakout in the first quarter as we constantly scored on our opponents through fastbreak opportunities and tough pressure defense. The opponents getting any kind of offense going and we ran off to an early lead by the end of the first, while holding our opponents to 0 points. After the first, we lead 19-0.

However, the next quarter was disastrous for us as we ourselves started getting too shot happy as we started launching from the outside most of the time instead of driving in and getting layups. The opponents managed to capitalize on our long misses, getting most of their 8 points from fastbreaks. We actually lost in this quarter 6-8, and this was the quarter in which they scored 8 of their 9 total points in the whole game.

But then again as we have done in most of our other previous games, we jumped out in the 3rd quarter after discussing about how we had to lock up our defense during halftime. After scoring 8 points in the 2nd quarter alone, we held ACS International to only 1 point in the 2nd half. We closed the game shooting 46% from the field and had 21 steals as a team.



Improvements

We need to cut down on our fouls. In this game, we had a total of 16 fouls compared to 9 fouls by ACS International. We had almost 3/4 of our fouls called on the perimeter as we kept reaching in or kept getting called for blocking fouls. We will play harder but smarter on defense, sliding more and reaching in less.

We need to do a better job running out on the fastbreak as this will be the way in which we can generate points quickly and a more easier way. In this game we did not run out on the break that often, resulting in us only scoring 50 total points throughout the whole game.



Strengths

We once again got alot of steals on defense, a total of 21 as a team. This will be crucial as forcing turnovers on the defensive end can give us more opportunity to run out on the fastbreak and can also demoralise our opponents.

On the other hand, we only got 11 turnovers as a team, showing that we took care of the ball pretty well. Of course, we will definitely like to improve even more in this number as taking care of the ball is crucial in key games.





We just got our feet wet in the first game of the tournament and we felt that we could have definitely done much better in many different aspects. We will however strive to improve on these aspects and perform better in future games while maintaining humility. More to come soon!