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Although I knew that we had some decent players on our team this year, I wasn't really sure how the season was going to turn out. Aside from the one game, in which we were short a couple of players, we played amazing well together. We outhustled other teams (we had to, as we were outsized in most of our matchups) and played good team basketball. This is what team sports are supposed to be about. We started off our season with an easy victory over the team that ended up finishing in 7th place (out of 8 teams). Tyler played well today, scoring his first 6 points of the season while guarding the opposing teams best player. Aside from some issues with carrying the basketball, he did well playing guard. He brought the ball up the court, and worked hard to set up his teammates for easy baskets. The second game was a bit closer, but we should have had a larger margin of victory. We didn't do as good of a job passing or playing defense during this game as we had in the past. This was the game that really opened our eyes to the need for pushing the ball up the court whenever the opportunity presents itself, as the opposition continually beat us up and down the court. Tyler played another strong game, but only ended up with 2 points. The "W" in the victory column is what really counts, and in that regard it was a success. Game 3 was a tough one for us. We were already missing one of our players, and another one showed up with his hand in a splint. We didn't do a good job moving the ball around the court today, and that resulted in our first (and what would turn out to be our only) loss of the season. Tyler got knocked down a bunch of times while bringing the ball up the court, and that got under his skin a little. He didn't have his best game ever today, but then again neither did the rest of the boys. We planned for today's game, as we knew that their best player was going to give us some trouble. We did a good job of holding him in check, though, thanks to some aggressive defense. Tyler had a good game, scoring 4 of the team's 18 points. His last two points were free throws, which turned out to be the winning points, as we didn't score again after his final shot. This game did us good though, as it gave a chance to see what a close game would be like. Our final game was against a team that hadn't won a game all year, and despite sitting a lot of our best players for the majority of the second half we still cruised to an easy victory. There really isn't too much to say about a game like this, but I can mention that Tyler scored 6 points today. The first playoff game resulted in another easy victory for us, as we played a one-win team for the first time this season. We jumped out to an early lead and didn't look back. Tyler scored 6 points again in this game, and also managed to get several steals. Once again we took advantage of the score to rest some of our players and get some of the others extra playing time. Our second playoff game was a rematch with the only team to have beaten us during the season. Once again we took an early lead and refused to give it up. We used our new-found running game to easily cruise to victory. Since we would be having another game only one hour after the completion of this one, we were able to rest our main scorers/defenders for the championship game later on. The championship game was a matchup of the #1 and #2 (us) seeds. The black team hadn't lost a game all season, so we knew it was going to be more of a challenge than some of the other games that we had played to get here. As in our other playoff games, we jumped out to an early lead, and kept running to build a 10 point margin. We held steady there for most of the game, pulling out an 8-point victory for the championship! Tyler scored a couple of points today and came away with some steals as well. This is Tyler's second league championship victory in his three years of playing, with a winless season sandwiched in. This feels much better than that did, that is for sure! Tyler definitely showed a vast amount of improvement between this season and last. His shooting and ball handling skills were much better than I thought that they would be. In fact, he spent about half the time on the court playing guard and bringing the ball up the court. He also played good defense throughout the season too. Both he and I are looking forward to what next season will bring!
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