Brutta Partita

"Bruta partita." That was how our Technical Director described our game against Geneva on February 20. It means ugly match in English and I have to agree with him. Remember a couple of weeks ago when I was blogging about how important it was to beat Geneva on the road? Yeah, well it was an important game but we kind of threw the win away when we played them in the friendly confines of Palamondo.

It is safe to say that if we would have beat the Geneva Devils we would be a lot closer to clinching a playoff spot. Unfortunately, it appears it will come down to the final games of the season for SAM Massagno now.

It is funny because we started the game out so well. We were clicking with our pick and roll and with the defense. Dan was scoring at will and we went into half-time with a 17 point advantage and only holding them to 31 points while we had 48.

It was definitely a tale of two halves. At half-time we could hear the opposing coach screaming at his team and telling them what they needed to do in the 2nd half. We could also hear the players respond to their coach with enthusiasm. Maybe we came out to cocky and thought we had the game in the bag, I don't know. I do know though that we came out AWFUL! We only scored 6 points in the 3rd quarter while Geneva scored 26. All of our shots were missing. It was like the stars had aligned for Geneva and it was going to be their game. I even missed a wide open lay-up. I haven't missed an open lay-up all year but apparently I was going to miss against Geneva. We also got away from the things we were doing so well in the first half like moving the ball and defense.

We played the 4th quarter even but the damage had already been done in the 3rd and we weren't able to recover. A friend of mine told me after the game that we can't win them all. He followed that up by saying that we can't lose them all either. I don't know how it applied but it at least made me laugh a little.

I think the worst part of the loss is that we don't have a game for another 2 weeks. It is always tough to practice with a bad taste in your mouth. I didn't sleep for two nights after the game. We could have enjoyed our time off but now in the back of our minds we are thinking about how we just blew the game to Geneva. With the loss we are only 1 game ahead of them in the standings.

I hope the loss will serve as a little bit of a wake up call to the team. Hopefully it will bring us back down to earth and realize what our faults are as a team. I am sure we will fix them with some good old fashioned hard work in the gym. We have to fix them or the rest of the season is going to be rough for us. I have confidence though. Nothing bad can come from hard work.