Friday 6 January 2012

Eddie Pomykala's "View from the Q"


Driving back home from the Concordia-UQAM contest last night, I was trying to figure out what I just saw. The host Citadins grabbed 44 rebounds- 17 on the offensive glass, made 12 more free throws than Concordia attempted going 28 for 30... held league leading scorer Kyle Desmarais to 16 and the conference's second leading scorer, Evens Laroche to 8 points. The Citadins' Eric Cote-Kougnima lived perfectly on the free throw line going a gargantuan 17 for 17 enroute to a 26 point night (which in the Q is like scoring 47 in another conference!) and they somehow managed to lose by 13. How does that happen???  Twenty seven Citadins turnovers may explain it and the Stingers stingy defense must get a lot of credit for forcing UQAM into low percentage shots. The 20 offensive rebounds Concordia worked for were another factor- they just crash all night.  A lot of guys can make threes. Even more guys take threes. But in this case, it was making threes when it counted the most- your up two- and now your up 5 ! The other guys go on a scoring run and bang- you silence them. Decee Krah did just that-  3 times in the 4th quarter- he was 5/13 for the game- but 3 for 3 when it counted the most.
There is a lot ot be said for " Playing your game." This is what I saw last night from Concordia. They played their game. It's not rocket science, this game. They get all loose balls, they score in transition off steals, they score on the same endline out of bounds play, they crash offensive boards and they set up an inside game by attacking the defense and drawing help slipping it inside for 2. Simple. They know when to help and when not to help. Play your game.
Loved Pete Campbell's line after his Golden Hawks scored 110 points against Waterloo this week, " We played fairly well offensively." I guess they did.

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