This is my first year of coaching high school boys basketball. I've never coached basketball, and was offered this position as a means of learning the game and maybe taking one of the JV positions when we start that team in the couple of years. I coach at a small charter school (~300 total students 9-12), and our team has received and accepted invitations to play some of the area AAAA schools as a first game punching bag. Last year we knocked off 2 of the 3 big schools that we played, but we still haven't earned respect from anyone.
Last night, we walked into yet another AAAA school's gym to play a game. Our team, with no player bigger than 6'1", was viewed by the opposing team and their fans as a JV team, something that they reminded us of over and over during warmups. Fine. We're used to that.
We play a back and forth game, never falling behind by more than 8 and never leading by more than 5. With 4.7 seconds left and leading by 2, our senior captain, best player in the gym who had dropped 44 to this point, grabbed a defensive rebound and was fouled. He goes to the line, misses both shots, and the opposing team runs down the court, and hits a fadeaway bank shot three at the buzzer. We lose.
I get on the bus, talk to my senior (Telling him, truthfully, that we should have never been in that situation, teammates needed to step up, etc), and then sit up front and think about what I could have done. Outside of advising our head coach to burn our last time out after the first miss so we could settle our team down, there wasn't much.
It's the next day and I'm still pissed, bummed, disappointed and happy we played well. But I have to say, this is the most painful I've endured as a coach, and one of the top 5-7 of my athletic "career".
Anyone else have some war stories they'd like to share? How did you deal with a loss like this?
Last night, we walked into yet another AAAA school's gym to play a game. Our team, with no player bigger than 6'1", was viewed by the opposing team and their fans as a JV team, something that they reminded us of over and over during warmups. Fine. We're used to that.
We play a back and forth game, never falling behind by more than 8 and never leading by more than 5. With 4.7 seconds left and leading by 2, our senior captain, best player in the gym who had dropped 44 to this point, grabbed a defensive rebound and was fouled. He goes to the line, misses both shots, and the opposing team runs down the court, and hits a fadeaway bank shot three at the buzzer. We lose.
I get on the bus, talk to my senior (Telling him, truthfully, that we should have never been in that situation, teammates needed to step up, etc), and then sit up front and think about what I could have done. Outside of advising our head coach to burn our last time out after the first miss so we could settle our team down, there wasn't much.
It's the next day and I'm still pissed, bummed, disappointed and happy we played well. But I have to say, this is the most painful I've endured as a coach, and one of the top 5-7 of my athletic "career".
Anyone else have some war stories they'd like to share? How did you deal with a loss like this?