We will most probably lose, I just want you to be prepared

As my dad said I am here to fill in details about our basketball game. My coach gave us the pre-game talk but instead of a motivational speech filled with moving quotes and stimulating optimism, this was the end of his speech: "We will most probably lose very badly, I just want you to be prepared".

Kayra driving to the hoop

He was right about the losing but it was not by much. We lost 53-54 in what would have been a heartbreaker except for the fact that most of the other players had witnessed last year's loss by over 40 points. I played the whole game with two other players and the three of us scored every point (and despite my dad's earlier comment I am positive I scored 30 points, not 28). There were only four kids who had actual in-game experience, one of whom was Zach. Zach, might I mention, successfully kept the ball away from the high schoolers who clearly had no qualms about ripping the ball away from a 10 year old. We were playing against 15-17 year olds and almost won even though 6 out of 8 players from our team were 14 or younger and one played with a back injury. We had only practiced once a week and would have had any decent coach rolling on the ground crying with our lack of fundamentals.

Free Throws

Now, enough run-up to the game. We started the game down 4-0 and I was already fearing the worst but we got those points back. Then they went on another run to make it 10-5 and again I was afraid we were going to let it fall away from us but we came back to make it 12-13, at which point I received a phenomenal pass from Kayra and scored a layup that put us ahead 14-13. This I remember clearly because of the complete shock on my coach's face...the team he had just told to be ready to lose by a ridiculous margin had just scored a go-ahead basket against the 3rd best team in Izmir. From here it was almost point for point; they would score then we would score and so on until the end of the first half. At half time they instated a new defense which threw us for a loop and by the time we had adjusted we were down 8 points. With just 2 minutes left they scored an uncontested 3-pointer putting them up by 11 points. This angered me greatly and with revived vigor we threw the rest of what we had at them so that we were down 51-54 with just 3 seconds left. Kayra then shot a two-pointer despite the fact that Edu (the best three-point shooter) was wide open waiting for the tying shot. As you might guess from the score, Kayra made it but there wasn't enough time to get that one last point back. It's going to be tough to leave the team after such a good start. It clearly had the first game feeling and I wish I could stay and work towards a win with the team.

They made it feel like we had home-court advantage