A Little Christmas Basketball

4 months ago

Before the holiday festivities kicked into high gear, @mrsbozz and I took a quick trip down to Ohio to watch our niece play a couple of basketball games on her high school varsity squad. The first game on Friday night was pretty exciting with her team being way down at the half, but they came back at the end to have a pretty dominating victory. I will share the final score with you in a little bit.

It was youth night at the game, so all of the youth program basketball kids were in attendance and at the end of the game there was a poster give away and singing by the team for the little kids. It was quite cute. You can see my niece in the photo above signing posters for the kids.

Unfortunately, the game the next night did not go so well. I took a few shots, but I probably won't share many of them here. The team was really good and by the fourth quarter there was a running clock because they were ahead by so much. It was a little hard to watch. I think if the girls had played a little better, it could have been closer.

This team is still rebuilding from loosing some pretty talented players last year to graduation. It will take them time to get their feet under themselves I think.

While my nieces passion definitely lies with softball, she tries her best and plays hard when she is out on the basketball court. Unfortunately, a lot of the time she spends like the photo you see above. I can't tell you how many times she was wide open on the court and her team mates don't even look her way.

To be fair, she isn't the best shooter, but heck if she is going to be open all the time, why not give her the chance. She might get better and become the gunslinger you need. It's just crazy how much space the other teams were giving her. I'm sure some of that had to do with their scouting and if she did become a clutch shooter, they would change their approach, but I'd love to see her get the chance.

On the NCAA side of things, there were a number of games played over the weekend. Friday night gave us 10 top 25 games. They were all pretty benign to be honest. Almost all of them resulted in blow out victories by the ranked team.

I should note that James Madison has finally made their way in to the top 25 at number twenty, so congrats to them!

Saturday gave us four top 25 games. I was watching a bit of the Butler/Providence game and that was pretty amazing. While not top 25, it was still a great game to watch. The Big East definitely has a way of making college basketball exciting!

#23 Memphis had a close win over Vanderbilt 77 to 75, and #5 UConn had a close 69 to 65 victory over St. John.

Probably the most exciting game of the day was #14 Florida Atlantic taking down #4 Arizona 96 to 95 in double overtime. Wow!

I should have put some money down on that game!

We are on a bit of a hiatus right now until the college bowl season is done. There will be some games, but they will probably be few and far between.

While we wait, I am looking forward to watching some top tier college football.