Like a Jigsaw Puzzle

What do Middle School basketball and a Jigsaw puzzle have in common?

Specifically, I'm not really that sure, but it occurred to me after our loss today over in Frisco against Summit Middle School that coaching a bunch of 7th graders to play effective basketball is kind of like solving a tricky jigsaw puzzle. Allow me to explain....

First of all... about my team. We don't have much height, but run 6 deep on strong talent, and the other 4 on the A team are solid. We practice well, but fall apart in games.

1. We turn the ball over WAY too much.
2. We struggle to break a press.
3. We struggle to run our zone offense.
4. We struggle with boxing out when rebounding.
5. We forget in-bounds plays randomly.
6. We make too many stupid mistakes.
7. Most importantly we SOMETIMES play hard.

So while we have anywhere from 2-3 games a week, we have to work on all these things at the same time while trying to win basketball games, and still have FUN doing so.... It's like trying to put the puzzle pieces together to make the picture. Once the big pieces start to fall into place and the little pieces follow, we will be a pretty dang good team!

I offered sodas for rebounding today, that seemed to help a bit, now how to solve the other pieces of the the puzzle????

On another note... Cayle is super sick today :-( Just laying around and sleeping all day, fever and no energy. At least it happened on a weekend!