Falcons Clinch Playoff Bye with win over Prep

There are good games, and there are bad games. The game against St Joe Prep Tuesday night was more like “huh???!!!”. Get this; at the end of the first quarter, the score was exactly 4-1 (that’s not a typo, folks), with the Falcons leading. More than half the quarter was over before anyone scored, and that was a free throw by Prep’s Dan Fitzpatrick, when he made the only free throw by Prep all night. I was so excited; I almost applauded the point, because it came with only 3:34 remaining in the first quarter. It almost seemed like there was a cover on both baskets, as the ball just wouldn’t fall for either team. You’d think this game was a defensive battle. It wasn’t. It was just that nobody could put the ball in the hoop. Prep shot 13-42 from the field (30.1%), and the Falcons shot 11 for 28 (39.3%). But, the Falcons hit a respectable 15 of 19 free throws, while the Prep only attempted 2 from the charity stripe. To show that it wasn’t necessarily a great defensive effort by either team, you only need to look at the number of turnovers (NC 12 – SJ 10) and steals (NC 5 – SJ 1). It was one of those games where you’re grateful to get out of the gym with a 38-31 win, and hope that doesn’t happen again.

Coach McCarron Gets 100 Wins!
Coach will probably hate that I’m mentioning this, but the win tonight was significant in several ways. First, the win secures, at least, second place in the Red Division and assures the team that they will get a first round bye in the playoffs. Second, it is the 100th win of coach McCarron’s career at North. Finally, this milestone win was against coach’s mentor, Speedy Morris. But, with Mike being Mike, this milestone will be downplayed by him. As he has told me before, “Coaches don’t win games, players do. Coaches only lose games when they don’t put their players in a position to win.” This is classic Mike McCarron. He puts the collective success of his players over his own personal achievements. But, I’d like to say to coach, congratulations and thank you. May your players win another 100 in short order, and may they all be successful in life, in part because they had you in their lives during their high school years.

Hockey Puck Strikes Again!
During the varsity games, I usually sit at the scorers’ table and track stats for the Falcons. I generally only handle rebounds, assists, turnovers, steals, blocked shots and minutes. But, a few games ago, I started keeping track of timeouts, mainly because it’s something that the coaching staff is interested in down the stretch. But, Tom “Hockey Puck” McKenna keeps the “official book” at our home games. During this game, I noted that Prep had used both of their 30 second timeouts in the first half. In the second half, after Prep called their second full timeout (leaving them with just 1 full timeouts), the Prep scorekeeper checked the number of timeouts remaining for Prep. He and Puck agreed that Prep had two timeouts remaining. I said, “No, Prep used 2 30’s in the first half and two full in this half. One left.” Both of them looked at their books again and both said that they showed Prep with 1 full and a 30 remaining. Two different North coaches, who also track timeouts, also showed Prep with only one timeout remaining. Will Puchalski, the timekeeper, who enters timeouts into the clock computer, also showed Prep as having one timeout remaining. The ref came over to check, and Puck argued that because both he and the Prep scorekeeper showed 2 remaining, that must be right. The ref stated that Puck’s book was “official”, so Prep had 2 remaining. In the end, Prep ended up with 6 timeouts. I’m just glad that it didn’t matter much in the whole scope of events. The problem here is that Puck chats too much with the opponent’s scorekeeper to know what’s going on half the time. Maybe he should go back to wearing two pair of glasses. But, what do I know?