My Cavs: Good, with a shot at being Very Good

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I don't want to leave folks hanging, so here's a quick update on my Community House Cavs ...

We split our games this week.

Fell behind early against our biggest rival, JM Robinson, rallied within 2 after three quarters, but ran out of gas and lost at the end. We got sloppy with the ball when we could least afford it, and also gave up two offensive-rebound putbacks on consecutive possessions. I'm already looking forward to the rematch next month!

Last night, we played well in the first half, and a half-court shot at the buzzer by our point guard Skyler gave us a 13-point lead. Her reaction was precious -- an absolutely amazed look on her face, arms raised as she ran back toward the bench, and she kept shouting, "I made it! I made it!" It was as if we had won the WNBA title.

But despite my stern reminder that we had come back from a bigger deficit just last week against Crestdale, we got a little full of ourselves thinking the game was over. The opponent, Southwest, didn't get that memo. They played harder and better than we did, and we turned the ball over several times as they pressured us a little. Just like that, we were up by only 2.

Thankfully, led by our experienced 8th-graders Skyler, Meniya and Jalayah, we took care of business in the 4th quarter and pulled away to win by 11. Meniya, whose pursuit of the basketball is relentless, finished with 20 points, the highest total by any Cav this season. I liked the defensive effort and hustle we got from our 7th-graders: Emma, Emersyn, Avery and Bryson.

So we take a 3-2 record into the break. Coulda been 4-1 if we hadn't run out of gas against JMR. But coulda been 2-3 if we didn't rally to win at Crestdale or even 1-4 if we also hadn't figured things out last night.

Yep, 3-2 is just about where we should be.

We are a good team, with the potential to be very good. We'll see if the girls (and their coach) are willing and able to make that jump in January.

Most importantly, it's a good group of kids, and a lot of interesting personalities. Very different from most of the girls I coached at my previous middle-school stop.

They do play hard, they want to get better, they want to compete. It's fun being their coach, and I'm excited about the 9 games on our schedule after break.

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