State Playoffs

It has been an exhausting week!!! Mentally, physically, and emotionally. It has been long. Really it has been a long season but it ended with a week of even more craziness.

Utah is so different than California. There are a lot less schools and geographically it is a lot smaller. 16 out of roughly 28 schools in 4A make state. It is not as hard to make state here. Yet none of our players had ever played in a state playoff game before. The program has just struggled the past few years. I mention this because we were NERVOUS!!! It was very hard to make a shot. Luckily we play great defense. We beat Mountain Crest on Monday night by 2 points at the buzzer. We were behind the entire game and just couldn't make a shot. But we played great defense and we made the one that mattered most:)

 It was a tense game. The girls looked scared the entire time. Heck I was nervous the entire time.

 As a coaching staff we naively thought that by our second game Wednesday we would be in a better place mentally. WRONG! We still struggled. We still missed so many easy shots. We were down the entire first half. Finally half way through the third we made a run. The fourth quarter we took care of business. We looked much more like our team normally looks. We beat Wasatch by ten propelling us into the quarter finals. As the picture below demonstrates we were ecstatic.

I was worthless for pretty much anything besides basketball this week. I could not sit still at work. I was anxious,  nervous, excited, and so many other things all at once. I knew we were good enough too compete for the state championship but had never been on this stage before.

 Making the the semi finals is a big deal. We felt like we were in a great place. We had previously played all three teams in the semi finals, we had previously beaten each team as well. Our team is small compared to every other team in the state. We play amazing defense and win a lot of games but don't get a lot of media attention, mainly because we don't have a superstar. In my opinion we have 17 of them, but we don't have one player that gets talked about over and over, no one players that scores 15-20 points a game. We have many players that work together but we lack a super star. We are the only team that does not have a 6ft something post. We battle and we battle hard.

Last night we played Skyline and we still struggled to make baskets. Defensively our team played the game perfectly. We kept a high scoring team to under 50 points. Unfortunately we could not make a basket. It was a struggle offensively. We lost by 7 points.

I know our girls were disappointed but as a coach I could not have been more proud. They bought into our vision for the team. They worked so hard every. single. day. We have played so much basketball since June 1st. It has been a ride. I loved loved loved working with girls I had coached previously. It was so fun to work with older girls as well. It was so fun to be an assistant again and get to learn from other coaches. I actually loved not being in charge!!!! We ended the season 18 and 4. We got Mountain View girls basketball team back on the map. It was a pleasure to make history with girls and coaches I love and respect.