GSV Coaches vs Media game wrap: Media lose a squeaker 107 - 23, Always Close Enough To Hurt™

Better than the other Media vs Coaches games though

Box Scores

• Not available

Apricot’s Live-ish Game Notes

• Well, getting ready for bed the night before the Big Game. I assume my medical coverage is up to date, and even if it isn’t, how much could an ambulance cost anyway?

• I’m not sure that modern medicine has advanced sufficiently to deal with the immense dignity loss about to occur

• Doing some game prep by watching the video of 100 kids vs 5 pro soccer players

• I just want to tell you all that I greatly appreciate your well-wishes and will always remember your support. Unless a hard screen puts me in the concussion protocol, in which case, I cannot guarantee I’ll remember

• But seriously it is an honor to be included in this affair. Not everyone gets a chance to play on the same court as top level basketball players.

• I have some ideas for how to attack the Coaches team, though we might not be organized enough to pull it off.

• I mean, good execution will be the difference between 68-0 and 68-2 but that’s still something

• It is a little wonderful to ponder the winding path that has led me to this moment. A lot of luck, a lot of support from others, some hard work and a drive to go through any door newly unlocked for me

• In case you hadn’t guessed, I’m rehearsing what I’ll say to the emergency paramedics

• As a reminder, no recordings of the event are allowed, so I’m not sure if I’ll have to go silent or I can keep rambling.

• Here we go, warmups

• Game start

• Matthew, Kenzo , Morgan, Marisa, Nathan starting

• Also playing, Conrado, Kiki, Danny, Kevin, me a little at the end

• [time passed, I was busy coaching, yelling and playing]

• Woof

• That was actually much better than I expected

• That was a 40 minute game so we were all dying

• We all have to look in mirror but as coach I have to take responsibility. My controversial “never practice” and “call no plays” strategy may have backfired. We’ll have to watch tape

• We survived. We actually did much better than I expected. I mean it was 107-23 but that’s better than the other media teams.

• It was actually something like 48-16 at halftime, which is like a sort of respectable score

• I realize the phrase “sort of” is doing a lot of work here

• MUCH better than BOS and DEN media squads.

• Actually, Nat surprised us by telling us it would be a 40 minute game. We thought it would be 10 or 12.

• We were not good, but Coaches were running plays and trapping us. Which is rough since some of us hadn’t played competitively in years

• Here’s what I remember.

  • First, I was the coach and ran rotations which consisted of me saying “who can play” to people dying on the bench. I subbed myself in for the last 3 minutes, set some screens, grabbed a good rebound and immediately got whacked in the head and my glasses went flying. I’m Udonis Haslem if he were 80 years old with hip problems.

  • Danny Emerman was pretty skilled, got into the paint and sprayed. Played with intensity, and may have been unhappy about the shellacking we got

  • Morgan Ragan had point guard skills and endurance. She was very encouraging.

  • Nathan Canilao also had some game. He could handle and he had some good pull up jumpers.

  • Marisa Ingemi hustled, got at least one rebound (her personal goal)

  • Kenzo Fukuda played 110% energy on the court, but was pretty wiped in the second half as a result, staring at the ceiling repeating variations of the phrase “I’m dying”

  • Jane Kenny had some game too. Good endurance and scored at least once and took a lot of good shots

  • Joseph Dycus got some rebounds, was in the mix in the paint.

  • My pal Kiki, the oldest at 69 years old., actually scored and got a rebound and a steal

  • Matthew Walter was tough-nosed and got fouled, hit some layups inside. He claimed he scored 25% of the points, but we were too tired to fact check him

  • Kevin Danna was nonstop hustle. He worked the hardest to get back on defense and contest. Very impressive. On some plays I even felt like, concede that, but he was booking back

  • Kevin Danna adds: Great writeup, Eric, but how dare you leave out that I hit 2 3’s?!?!?! ;) Valkyrie Nation also needs to know that I yelled “cash out” in Natalie Nakase’s direction after I drilled a 3 to cut the deficit to 64. I think that might have also been what Nakase was referring to as trash talk, but maybe not.

  • Conrado Pascual hustled and his speed had him disrupting some plays.

• I’ll add that I was very proud of the effort and hustle of our team. The coaches actually threw nonstop traps and full court pressure on us and even snuck in a zone or two and they ran plays at us. So we experienced at least 50% of their power. In the end, no one was injured, and I think everyone had a really good time.

• Coach Natalie gathered us at the end and said that now we could understand a little bit of the intensity of their practices and a game because we only had an hour of work and their practices are at least two hours of the same nonstop intensity.

• Coach Natalie also said something about how we learned that trash talk can energize the other team. I didn’t know what that meant, but Nathan later told me he clapped in someone’s face early on after Media got a stop, which Coaches didn’t like and there was trash talk in his direction henceforth. So basically, Nathan probably cost us about 20 points of net rating. He also criticized me for subbing him back in several seconds after he subbed out. Hey, he looked ready.

• And the most important thing is that we outdid the Boston media in their game versus the coaches and also the Denver media so in fact as Marisa put it this is further proof that West is Best.

• Courtside Valks report (Marisa, Kenzo, Joseph, Nathan) on the media game.

  They brought up one detail I forgot to mention. Natalie brought out armfuls of Gatorade for us at halftime. Probably because we looked so dead we might have been a liability problem

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New Discord server for subscribers

If you don’t know what Discord is, you can ignore this. If you like how the site is now, then don’t worry. This site will still work the same and I’ll still post game previews and wraps over email and the web, etc.

Basically Discord is a group chat where you can engage with me. It’s good for conversation that’s a bit more casual than leaving a web site comment.

I also want to try posting my live game notes in the Discord chat as I write them. Plus whatever good ideas you all come up with.

For instance, I live-commented the media-coaches game over Discord and answered questions.

For now, I’ll keep it open to everyone, but I reserve the right in the future to restrict it to paying subscribers.

The invitation link for May: https://discord.gg/4uSaSw75Y