11-23 Ambler Catholic Tournament- Win vs St Alphonsus. A win is good. Despite SLOW play, we pulled out the win. We'll take it for the first game of the season. Level of play compared to where we should be by playoffs. 4 out of 10

11-24 Ambler Catholic Tournament- Win vs Patrick. This team wasn't very good so we really weren't tested. However, our overall speed and intensity has improved over the first game. Level 4 out of 10

11-24 LaSalle Tournament- 1st round loss to St Bede. Welcome to real basketall! We played scared from the very beginning. By the 2nd half, I could see some of the fear finally going away. Yes they were very big but that's only one aspect of basketball. We must NEVER play scared. If you are afraid to fail, then you might as well not play because you WILL FAIL. 4 out of 10

11-25 Ambler Catholic Tournament- Win vs St. Alphonsus. This team had two good players. Kyle and Vincent did an excellent job of taking one of them out of the game. I think he had NO points. Our overall quickness and intensity improved and can be attributed to the speed of the LaSalle game. I noticed that already, our team in one weekend has improved to a next level. 5 out of ten.

11-26 Ambler Catholic Finals- Win vs MMR. This team beat us up pretty good less than 2 weeks prior. However, we are already a different team since that time. Our overall intensity and quickness starting with Greg and Vincent really shocked them. Everybody seemed to feed off of that. Joe and Kyle really protected the paint. Dimitri with his quick and long arms, really frustrated their guards. The best part is we are still only at a 5.5-10 level. Here's what will improve over the season: Offensive shooting percentage(both because of accuracy and better decisions), foul shooting percentage, triple threat, knowing the plays, adding more plays. Defensively; Boxing out, improved anticipation of ball movement, improved defensive posture, playing as a team, increased quickness, improved fast breaks, knowing and executing more defenses.

11-30-07 SMG vs OLMC B- This team was pretty weak. Our defense led by Dimitri, Greg, Kyle and Vincent created a lot of turnovers and allowed us to cruise to a fairly easy win. Everyone scored which is rare but Lucas Friel was red hot scoring 18 points with 9-11 shooting to lead the team.

12-02-07 SMG vs JUDE B- I was very impressed with our defense again. Kyle, Greg, Vincent and Blake really were intimidating and gave us a 21-5 halftime lead against a team that was pretty aggressive. Does anybody notice a pattern? When you make the other team miserable by playing tough defense, they get frustrated and you can wear them down. This Jude team wasn't all that bad and they showed a tougher side in the second half. However it was too late for them. This is a good example of how important it is to create a dominant image from the very beginning. It took the other team half the game to play to our level of intensity. Offensively, our scoring was balanced with Lucas, Vincent, Blake, Greg, brandon and Dimitri all scoring multiple times. Kyle led scorers with 12 points and our 2nd 40+ point game in a row.

Now it's time to fine tune our play for some quality teams that are still ahead. Despite these wins I still see problems that will appear once we play higher quality teams. We have to fix them so we are ready.

12-05-07 Win vs St Martin A very weak team and although we started out strong, we lost focus. Even weak teams can match up for a while and given confidence, can steal a game. This was very close to the case.

12-07-07 Win vs St Isadore. One strong player on this otherwise weak team. He kept them in the game but I liked the way we defended against him. He didn't get the ball much and without the ball it's tought to score! I saw the best box-outs of the season that allowed us to get most of the rebounds. Once again, we struggled with our motion offense. We're going to need it to beat the good teams.

12-19 Loss vs Mt Carmel A. One of our best efforts of the year despite losing. We proved we can play with any A team if we play confident, hard and smart. This is the type of energy and teamwork we need to capture each game we play.

12-20 Loss vs Corpus A. This was definitely a let down game less than 24 hours after a very physical hard fought Mt. Carmel team. We just couldn't match our play from the previous day and never were in this game. However, we're making plays against quality teams now. We need to just make more plays to be competitive with the good teams.

21-27 Loss to MMR-B. A really solid effort in a tough 1 point loss. We outplayed this team from beginning to end but could not make our foul shots. We also missed a critical fould shot box out with 21 seconds left and us up by 1 point. That miss cost us a basket and put us down 1. We also did a lot of heads down dribbling and missed some easy opportunities throughout the game. There's no doubt that if we had Dimitri for the game, it wouldn't have been so close. Greg's, Blake's and Kyle's effort and success helped keep that game close and give us a chance.

21-28 Loss to St Luke. This was a nice solid A team and we didn't match up well with their big guys. We got off to a horrible start and we didn't get in synch offensively until midway through the 1st half. However, these are the type of teams we must compete with. Our 3 x 2 defense was poor against this type of team. We need to learn where to be and when on our 3 x 2. I must point out Kyle's standout performance. Kyle and Vincent are playing at a different level of intensity because they do it the ENTIRE game. You all should be noticing and trying to copy it. If all 7 of you played that hard the whole time, we'd be a much better team. Greg's ability to figure out a way to get us our first score when we were down 24-0 shows me that anyone can 'will' themselves good things.

So 4 losses in a row and a couple very good teams coming up next weekend that make us BIG underdogs. This is the time where you can basically quit or get angry about failure and use the anger to get better by commitment to good practices and mentally preparing for each game prior to the game. Does it really matter since we are only a good B-team? It ABSOLUTELY matters. Because how you handle failure in sports is how you handle failures in life. Some become quitters and blame everything else on their failures and some get angry and use that anger to 'will' themselves SUCCESS. That's why it's important.

A winner prepares for a game by mentally running through the positions and plays just before the game.

A winner, after making 7-10 in foul shooting practice, immediately trys to improve to 10-10.

A winner 'remembers' and finds time to complete their coaches assignments.

Who wants to be a winner?

Loss 41-45 vs St Rose A- We had a chance early to really pull off the upset. We missed too many layups and turned the ball over against their man press about 4 times early. We also had a chance to get the big guy out early with two fouls but we didn't attack him enough. Despite that, the game was never out of reach but we let the big guy catch at the high post to easy and they got 3 easy baskets to start the 2nd half. On a positive note, we absolutely dominated their second team. We beat their press a lot and made them pay with some easy baskets. Our defense was very good for the most part and we rebounded very well against a taller team.