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Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Canada vs Puerto Rico

Yesterday was our first real test as we took on a feisty and crafty Puerto Rico team. Although not huge in stature, they are very quick and compete incredibly hard. We knew we would be in for a battle.

For most of the first half our nerves got the best of us and we played more as a lot of isolated individuals than as a collective group. Our defense was relatively strong in the first half, but we turned the ball over too much - 11 times in the first quarter and the first four possessions of the game. In order to combat the turnovers we decided to change our defense - first to a half court zone which created a couple steals and easy scores, and then to full court zone pressure that really took Puerto Rico out of sync. With a strong final 2 minutes to end the half we took a seven point lead into the break.

When we talked at half time as a staff and looked at the stats we discovered that our guards had taken down more than two-thirds of our rebounds. This was disappointing as we knew we had a huge size advantage. So at half time we challenged our bigs to get into the paint and control the boards - they stepped up to the challenge. We also made an adjustment to recognize who between our 4 and 5 players were being guarded by a smaller player. Whoever had the better advantage we put them inside to our 5 spot. This gave us an even greater post up advantage inside and pulled the little size Puerto Rico did have outside to the perimeter.

These small adjustments, combined with an improvement of team work and making the effort plays we needed, allowed us to pull away.

We head to practice shortly to prepare for Mexico. The game tonight should be a memorable experience as Mexico has been competing with a full house every night which provides them with lots of extra energy. A major emphasis in our prep today will be defending without fouling. Although we were tremendous at getting to the paint and subsequently shot 54 free throws last night, we fouled too much. We will emphasize adapting to who we are guarding and understanding that our length advantage at almost every position thus far means we don't have to be as tight on the ball when applying ball pressure.

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