Fight or Flight

We had another scrimmage tonight against Fribourg, probably the best team that we will face in our conference this year. Our coach keeps telling us before games that we need to “fight” and “keep fighting.” I have to say that regardless of how frustrated I was at the end of the first half, I was proud that we kept fighting. I saw a vast improvement from our last scrimmages to this one, even though we still lost. Collectively, we are still learning each other’s strengths and weaknesses as well as who is going to read the defense and make an intuitive cut, who is going to fake coming off a screen, and who is going to dive on the ground for a lose ball. As we familiarize ourselves with one another and how we move on the court I’m sure we will improve and perhaps even surprise ourselves.

One of the most frustrating things about being as competitive as I am is that when you feel like you are giving something everything you’ve got and are still falling short you want to break down. After the first half of our scrimmage a part of me quite honestly felt like taking off my sneakers. But any athlete with a competitive mindset knows that when it comes down to “fight or flight,” you fight. The second half was a little bit better. For example, I adjusted my boxing out so I stopped giving a crap about getting the ball and just worried about blocking out the other team’s superstar. She did not have nearly as many rebounds or points in the second half. I realized that I wasn’t going to get any easy baskets posting up with her guarding in front of me and with one of her teammates behind me, so I started crashing the offensive boards for some easy buckets…I got 2 AND1’s in the second half. I also realized that since we were having a lot of trouble getting the ball on the wing that it couldn’t hurt for me to set an extra screen for our guard so she could get open…we were able to run more of our offensive sets in the second half as well. So even though we lost by a solid amount, we made adjustments as a team and were more competitive in the second half. Now, if we can put two halves together…

We have another scrimmage tomorrow. So tonight we get to sleep, but tomorrow we will keep fighting.