CHS coach David King hailed sophomore Kalia Littlejohn for the play of the night, on which she made off with a steal, went behind her back on the dribble, then nailed a jumper. (John Fisken photo)
Now the real games begin.
High school hoops semi-officially tipped off Saturday night, as the Coupeville High School girls’ basketball squad played in a eight-team jamboree at Sedro-Woolley.
The 1A Wolves faced a pair of 2A squads in the host Cubs and Bellingham.
CHS round-ball guru David King returns to the Coaches Corner to assess the jamboree, and look towards the start of the regular season Tuesday night.
Three important things came out of the jamboree.
One, we got out and played against someone else and got our first game nerves out of the way.
Two, we now know what we need to work on to improve.
Three, defensively and offensively, if we execute, good things will happen.
We played nervous, rushed and at times panicked. This led to wild shots, high passes and turnovers.
I’m looking for us to settle down and play our game on Tuesday.
At times we ran our offense, but other times we had three or four players running it and one or two not on the same page.
This is something we have talked about as a team that we need to improve from last year.
We forced some things on our dribble drives. Just need to be smarter with our movement.
As a team, our court awareness and passing to an open teammate needs to improve. We do that and we get in-rhythm shots.
We took some poor shots. And the good shots we did take, just didn’t fall (overshot due to nerves, I believe).
We didn’t block out well and we need to have better communication overall.
We have been implementing a few things defensively this year, the team executed these and it led to some turnovers.
Throughout we did a great job of getting out and running the floor and looking ahead.
When we did have the players on the floor and when they all ran the plays, it was something we can build on to get good looks at the basket.
Hustle? We hustled the whole time on the court.
We also had many offensive rebounds, we just couldn’t get the put-backs in.
In a nutshell, we need to keep improving.
Did we do some things well? Yes. Were we pleased with our play? No.
One thing with this team is the competitive drive they have as players.
I’m looking forward to getting back in the gym on Monday, then seeing how we do against Blaine on Tuesday.
Coupeville Sports 