It’s back!

A tough season ahead
By ‘it’, I am referring to both my D300 and basketball season. The two go together like chocolate and peanut butter! I received the D300 on Tuesday. I must give credit where credit is due. Nikon did a fantastic job of repairing it and giving it a good cleaning. It looked new and, of course, performs flawlessly, as it did in it’s pre-broken days.

Last night was its first outing. Tony had his first basketball game of the season. This season, I feel, will be a tough one, but it will certainly be one of growth and learning, to be sure. The team is radically different. We lost 3 players from last year’s team. One was a senior and is now playing college ball. Two others left the school … the economy hits everywhere and private school isn’t cheap. All 3 were starters! This year’s team is slower, less athletic, and less experienced.

I think that we had a preview of what is to come. Any coach that is the least bit competent will notice that there are only a couple of people that they need worry about: 1) Tony, at point guard and 2) our shooting guard. That’s it. The others might hesitate or bobble the ball. Inexperience. So, that’s what happened last night. After the first quarter, they started pressuring us with a full court press, then they put two people on Tony and two on the the shooting guard, which left two others completely open; however, it effectively shut down our offense.

Tony was not pleased at the end of the game and thinks that the coach needs to put in some different plays to handle defenses better, given their weaknesses. Also, as we have no depth on the bench, players that can come in and substitute, or starters cannot play tight defense, lest they get into foul trouble. It will be an interesting season.

In the end, we lost 50-64. Tony had 12 points, 10 assists, and 6 turnovers, 3 of which his teammate dropped the pass, 2 from bad decisions, and 1 from a bad call by the referee, who later admitted that it was a bad call. Oh well, to err is human!

Anyway, I had fun watching him, as always, and listening to the clickity-clack of the shutter. I was the lazy photographer last night. After having left Charleston at 3:45 PM and arriving at the school at 7:00 PM, I didn’t exactly feel like roaming around the court and taking the photos, so I just shot from the stands. It’s a small gym anyway!