Last week was a big week for our team as we opened up with 3 games in 5 days. Our first game was against PSU-Fayette. Personally I enjoyed going there as it was the site of my career high in college, but little did I know that there was something even bigger and better there…..Pizza King large pizzas!! And they are the biggest pizzas I’ve even seen in my life!
Those pictures hopefully show some perspective on how big they were. I swear Brett could fit into one of those boxes. The good thing is we enjoyed those HUGE pizzas after a 92-83 win.
Our second game was against Geneva in their Coaches vs Cancer Tip-Off Tournament. Excellent cause to be part of and it is near where I live, so it was good to be “home”. Geneva had won their previous 7 home openers and they went up 15 early. It looked like they were on their way to 8 in a row, but our guys pulled together, came back, and closed them out in the end. It was a really good win for our inexperienced team. Heck, every road win is good for our team! It was also cool for Mike as he played in front of a lot of his friends from Blackhawk HS and Geneva College, and now has bragging rights for the year. This will probably be an annual trip for us so hopefully he continues to win bragging rights! Haha
Now we had a chance to go 3-0. But to do so we would have to overcome a LOT of adversity. Big D was hurt the night before and didn’t play. We were playing on short rest against a team that plays 18 guys. Then during the game we shot 30% from the floor including 2-20 from 3. Mind you we came into the game shooting 50% from 3. So anything that could go wrong was and we were down 14 with 16 minutes to go. But once again this group found a way to put themselves in a position to win. We ended up losing by 1 point even with all that against us. I was actually more proud of our guys in the loss than the 2 wins. They are really forming a strong identity…a team that will stick together no matter what, never panic, and keep fighting to the end. Now that is a team I will go to war with anytime!!
Speaking of our team, they are something I’ve very thankful for this Thanksgiving holiday. Every practice before Thanksgiving we circle up and let everyone know what we are thankful for. It was a good time to let them know I am truly thankful for being able to coach the team that we have. They are a good group that is going to do great things here at Pitt-Greensburg!
I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving and enjoys some family, friends, fun, and food!!
Coach Strickland