Hardwood Happenings

It’s that time of year!

It is now time for all the hard work, sweat, tears to be put to good use. It is tournament time and is without a doubt my best time of the year, not only to coach but to watch as well.

All district tournaments get underway at some point next week, where the region will be narrowed down to eight teams. This is the time of year where coaches start collecting and exchanging films getting ready for that win or go home game. The Mercer Titans will begin play Monday night at 8:00 vs. West Jessamine. The 46th district tournament will be held at East Jessamine. You can certainly check amnews.com to get a complete listing of tournament schedules for your favorite local team.

You want your team peaking at this time of the season and playing your best basketball. You want your players to be confident, but also keep in mind that anybody can beat anybody on any given night. Unfortunately we have proven that several times this season! But hey you can throw out the records and starting late Friday night or early Saturday morning we are all back to 0-0!

Things to consider when getting your team ready

There are several things to consider when getting ready for tournament time. How long do we practice each day? Do we give them one last day off? Do we give them a detailed game plan? In practice how much do we go live? We try and get in extra shooting and one of the coaches stays after for anyone who wants to get in extra shooting. These are just a few of the things that we think about and prepare for this time of year.

I will have to say that the girls 12th Regional Tournament will be an adventure to say the least. I really feel that if you can get in it, you can win it! Also from what I have seen the boys region may be as interesting as the girls. Naturally I want the Titans to win it but I would have to say on the girls side that Rockcastle is the early favorite, but there are a host of other teams that are plenty capable of bringing home the hardware! It should be fun and games should be interesting.

Like I said I am not going to make predictions but you can, so let me know who you feel will win each district (45, 46, 47, 4 and then who you feel will win and head to Diddle.

March Madness is here and a great time of year.

Until next week, keep your head up and keep shooting with confidence!

The team that plays together, stays together!

This week in the spirit of Valentine’s Day I will attempt to explain what my wife goes through during a season. First of all my wife, Carmen, has no idea that I am blogging about this subject. Carmen and I have been married for 17 years in August and she has had to endure 17 seasons of basketball and also several years of baseball when I coached that as well.

I am going to be honest, I really don’t know how she does it — especially since we have had two kids and all the demands that they require.

A lot of people who are not real familiar with basketball don’t realize the time element involved. I am sure some people think that we show up on game nights, coach and go home. Just ask Carmen; she can give you a pretty accurate picture of what all is involved. She would tell you that it is not just a October to March deal — it is 12 months with the exception of the two week dead period.

My wife is a third grade teacher who takes her job just as serious as I take my coaching job and puts countless hours into her job. So not only does she have to do her job at a high level, she has to make sure everything is taken care of with the kids and everyday household tasks.

There are a lot of days I have practice or a game or scout a game that they are in bed when I get home. We often communicate through e-mail just to find out who is picking who up and who has practice and what is for dinner and all those things because we don’t have time at home. She keeps the house clean, clothes washed and makes sure the kids have completed homework or if they have special needs for school the next day.

Did I mention that she also tries to support my program and stay on top of our season? I can remember in 2003 when we won the 12th region Championship for the first time is school history the first face I saw was my wife and tears of joy, she understood what it meant to me and was more happy for me than anyone in that gym. She was also there the year before when we lost a heartbreaker in the region finals and she sent my then 4 year old son over to the bench and he simply asked me, with his lip quivering “Does this mean we are not going to Diddle?” For some reason that sent a sense of peace over me and all I could do was smile at him and tell him we will be back next year and we will go to Diddle.

It truly takes a special person to sit around and listen to me gripe and complain about a bad day, practice or game. It takes a special person when I am home and the phone rings off the hook and it is all concerning basketball. It takes a special person when I tell her that practice is over at 5:45 and that I will be home to eat supper and something comes up and I get home about 7:00 and they waited for me to eat. It takes a special person when the season is over and I am so tired that all I want to do is come home and sleep and knowing she has had events happen in her day that she would love to talk to me about but my mind is not there.

If you are going to coach you better have a special someone at home who is going to be there everyday, good or bad! I have been lucky to have that special someone.

Until next week, keep your head up and shoot with confidence!!

On Feb. 12th we will be breaking ground for our new school and as a basketball coach it will be exciting to watch the new gym being built. Based on what I have heard and on visiting other gyms, ours will be very similar to that of Scott County. If you have not visited that gym, it is a beautiful facility.

Once our gym is complete — hopefully in time for the 2008-09 season — I think about what a great tournament we could host. Just think, we are centrally located and, more important, we would have access to 5 gyms within a few miles, four of which will be on the same campus.

I don’t know of any school in the state of Kentucky that will be able to say that. We have enough hotels in the area and restaurants that it could become one of the state’s best.

Now I realize this takes an enormous amount of work and community support in order to pull it off, but just think what it would give back to the community.

Most of the successful tournaments have one big sponsor and then several smaller ones to help offset all the costs involved. The most expensive part is paying for officials. I would propose that is be a boy/girl tournament and involve as many of the local teams that would like to be involved and then invite others from around the state.

So if you invited 16 boys teams and 16 girls teams, just think of the tournament we could have right here in Mercer County.

When I was playing for Harrodsburg in the 1980’s we always had the Fort Harrod Classic (that later changed to the McDonalds Classic) and I always looked forward to that event every year. I also remember several years ago, when the girls program here hosted the Dairy Queen classic that was regarded as one of the state’s best girls Christmas tournaments.

I think we would be doing great to get another tournament going and involve both the girls and boys teams.

Back to the sponsor thing, I know when I look into a tournament for my team I am always looking at what they have to offer. Some of the things I look at are; how many games are you guaranteed, do they offer any hotel rooms or discounted rooms, do they feed your kids and proximity of gyms that you have to travel to.

Like I said, this would have to be a community effort to pull off and could be a great fundraiser for our basketball teams and we all know about fundraising and that if never ends! My basic point is that it takes a lot of money to put on a tournament that people will want to come back to year in and year out and, if you don’t have a good sponsors, you without a doubt lose money.

When would be a good time of year to hold this tournament? Most tournaments are either the week before Christmas or the week after. I prefer the week before Christmas, because you have less threat of bad weather and personally I like to take my team to a tournament once a year that we can spend a night or two, and I like to do that after Christmas.

There are several high profile tournaments before Christmas that could cause us to look at another time, but I think with our location and plenty of gyms in such a close range and if we offered boy/girl tournament we would have plenty to offer to hold our own.

I think we could even get this going before the new school is built and once it is built just add to it. We have three gyms here on this campus and also the gym on the Lexington Street Campus (Harrodsburg gym).

What would you call it? I guess that would depend on sponsors — if you got a big sponsor name it after them. I kind of like going back to when it was first started here and call it the Fort Harrod Classic Tournament. How about “Titan Town Winter Slam.”

Hey just a suggestion, what does anyone else think? What do you think about the tournament idea and what would you name it?

Just a little predicition here: UK 78 Florida 69!!

Ok, I am probably thinking with my heart and not my head, but hey anybody can beat anybody on any give night. Rupp will be rockin’.

Until next week, keep your head up and shoot with confidence!