W.T. White recap - A Tale of Two Halves

We beat a scrappy W.T. White team Saturday at home 68-52.

The first half we were really incredible. Did not make many mistakes, shot a very high percentage, found the open man and out rebounded them by a large margin.

In the second half we did all of those things well again, but happened to have 16 turnovers against 8 in the first half. We have to do a better job of closing out games. However, W.T. White deserves a lot of credit as well because they made a lot of contested shots in the second half and never quit competing after being down 41-19 at half and as much as 26 early in their third. They are a scrappy bunch and have played a tough schedule. Their record is 8-5 after we beat the Saturday.

A few stats:

We out rebounded them 38-20
We had a season high 19 assists
We had a season high FG% of 59.5
We are 42 of 52 (82.3%) from the FT line in our last two games

McKinney recap

We got away with a win in McKinney last night, 66-54. They are a very well coached team with talented guards and a lot of promise. I think they still have a lot of wins ahead of them.

Their two best players scored 20 and 23 points, but I really think we did a good job on them. They got a couple of open shots early, but not many after that. They still made some, but if I guy can score when he is being defended that says more about him as a player than it does our defense.

We were up by 3 at halftime and they came out and showed us some full court pressure and we handled it really well. There were a lot of instances where we were patient until we found a lane, drove the ball to the middle of the floor and created a numbers advantage that led to either a score or FT's.

Speaking of free throws - we were 26 of 31 from the free throw line, which is pretty incredible. The kids not only made their free throws but played aggressive, made good decisions, and most importantly, played together. It was a good win.

3 Big Keys

When you get down to the nuts and bolts of basketball, there are really three key ingredients to winning games: 1. Take care of the ball. 2. Take good shots. 3. Play great defense. That's it.

Now depending on personnel and philosophy, there are many ways to obtain the desired result for all three, but if you really think about it that's all basketball is. It's a simple game.

Idabel Festival

We played Broken Bow and Idabel this weekend in the Idabel Basketball Festival. The format was two Oklahoma schools vs. two Texas schools. The other Texas school was Mt. Pleasant. Paris and MP were both 2-0 against Broken Bow and Idabel.

Broken Bow did a good job in the first game of controlling the tempo and frustrating us in the first hal. The kept the score low and controlled the clock. The halftime score was 19-17. We made some adjustments at halftime and turned up the heat defensively a little bit and got some easy scores and controlled the tempo in the second half and won 54-43.

The Idabel game was just as I expected. They were MUCH improved from when we played them on 11/28. We kept telling the guys not to expect the same result because they would be much better. The shot the ball much better and played tough at home as usual. In fact it was the first time we have beaten them there in recent memory. The final score was 62-52.

The other bonus was we got to see Mt. Peasant play twice. They are very quick and athletic and will be even better once they get two key players back after Christmas from football injuries. This district is going to be a battle!

J.J. Redick

I'm a big Duke basketball fan and it's just not the same watching them this year without J.J. Redick. These are the highlights from the Duke-Texas game last year when Redick lit up the Longhorns for 41. When you watch the film notice how many of his shots never hit the rim. He was unbelievable.

Frisco Tournament Champions

We've been fortunate to accomplish a lot goals the last couple of years in the program, but one of the things we had set out to do hadn't been accomplished until this weekend: win a tournament.

We went 3-0 this weekend to win the Frisco Invitational tournament, defeating Denton Ryan 61-49, Frisco Centennial 67-61, and Wylie 56-54. We played two games on Saturday due to the games being cancelled on Thursday, and the fatigue was evident in the championship. However the kids fought through it and showed a little mental toughness and found a way to win. It was a great accomplishment for our program and I am very proud of our team.