Cape Girardeau basketball tournament
In January, the basketball club that Lola plays ball for
(Purple Rain) participated in a basketball tournament in Cape Girardeau. This
was Lola’s first travel tournament (or tournament at all actually). Lola and I
drove down to Cape Girardeau on Saturday morning for a full day of basketball
starting at 11:00am.
Apparently, the Drury family is based in Cape Girardeau. So,
in addition to a fancy hotel and convention center, they also built a massive 6
court sportsplex in Cape Girardeau. This allowed them to run a tournament with
10 different divisions across boys and girls over a couple of days.
The team we were supposed to play in the first game didn’t
show up . . . which set in motion the tournament organizers scrambling to
reschedule. Our first “game” ended up being a one quarter scrimmage against a
pretty good 4th grade team. Lola (#26) and her team did well in this warmup including Lola converting a 3 point play: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdK968cEMhvcQCDSCWaS9aHw8fRlD2VZkdRhDl61kIzxYoKMjmCAdqm8symsXPuA/photo/AF1QipNK5KYyDLMGpmxyPeyQewiGIOlAlsimeBo3j3kK?key=WTZyaU92NUpZWmdTVWY0clFsbHhVTVhOOFR4NGFn
We hung around the gym and watched a couple of other Purple
Rain teams play before our next game against a really good team from St. Louis
called Phenom. After a close first half, Phenom went on a run in the early
second half leading to a 24-10 loss. Our team struggled a fair amount with ball
pressure and aggressiveness from the other team. This was compounded by the
refs calling the game even looser than our team was used to. It was good
experience for the team as anyone playing basketball has to learn to accept
that sometimes they get fouled and it doesn’t get called. Lola had an ok game,
but definitely had numerous turnovers (as did the rest of the team). She ended
up scoring 8 points and getting 4 steals and 5 rebounds. Below are a few
highlights.
Lola hits a floater in the lane on a fast break
Lola hits a nice turnaround jumper at the end of this clip
after a bit of messy play before that:
Lola hits a 3 pointer:
The kids were pretty frustrated after the first game. But
they recharged with a visit to Panera and a trip to pool at the hotel. The
Drury Plaza Hotel also served a happy hour which included drinks, but more
importantly they served a bunch of food: pasta, hot dogs, nachos, popcorn,
salad, and turkey chili. All “free” with the hotel. Lola hadn’t had much chance
to just casually hang out much with the kids from her basketball club, so it
was nice to get that opportunity and Lola had a great time. Ultimately, if you
ask Lola about the trip, she’ll spend all her time talking about the hotel
hanging out with her teammates.
Lola’s next game ended up being scheduled for 8 pm. The opposing
team had a reasonably well organized zone press that a lot of the team
struggled to move the ball against and so we had a lot of turnovers. The other team
also had the uncanny ability to hit shots, particularly free throws. Shooting
~80% from the line in 5th grade is borderline absurd. After going
down 8-0 to start the game, our team rallied to tie it at half time only to
eventually lose 27-20. It was a good solid match-up. Lola’s stat line was 10
points, 9 rebounds, 3 blocks, 2 steals, and 1 assist.
She was able to consistently find ways to just blow by the
press. She shows this in the first 20 seconds of this video while finding a
teammate for a shot before putting one in herself.
Lola busts the press again, misses the layup but then knocks
down a nice shot early in the video
One of my two favorite plays in the tournament at about 25
seconds into this video. Lola is on a fast break and just decides that she
wants to back out and shoot a 3 pointer, and she knocks it down.
The next morning, Lola and I had breakfast and were off to the
final game. Lola's division was supposed to be four 5th
grade girls teams playing a round robin with the best 2 playing for the
championship. As noted earlier, one team didn’t show up to the tournament at
all. Another left after the first day. So that left just two teams to play in
the finals. Fortunately, it was the best match-up we had played the previous day. Again Purple Rain fell down early 12-0 butrallied back to be
within 5 with 10 minutes to go but couldn’t quite fully close it out. Lola had
some really great plays in the game and had 11 points, 9 rebounds, 3 blocks, and
3 steals in the 21-15 loss.
Lola hits another nice 3 pointer here right at the start of
the video. She shot very well from behind the arc in this tournament hitting 50%
of her 3 point attempts.
Not uncommon for Lola to just pull down the rebound and
outrun the other team to the basket on a 1 person fast break. (30 seconds into
this video)
She hits a nice jumper from the corner here . . .almost
another 3
My other favorite play from the tournament. She just powers
this ball into the basket on a foul.
So technically, we didn’t win any games, but the girls had
fun and enjoyed being able to take home some hardware for getting second place
including Lola getting the MVP trophy for her team.
Comments