Jim Charles is the High School Girls Basketball correspondent for DelawareSports.com.  His articles appear below...

St. Mark’s 46, Caravel 36

January 10, 2007

Last night, in what had to be the best girls matchup on the daily slate, St. Mark’s handed Caravel a ten-point defeat in a game that, for the most part, lived up to its anticipated billing. Only in the 4th quarter did Caravel put itself into a hole that it couldn’t extricate itself from.

The News Journal listed a somewhat different score (47-34) than I did in my headline, but my version is what was up on the scoreboard at the end of the game.

First off, I have to give credit where it’s due. The Lady Bucs looked a whole lot sharper than the last time I checked in with them back in their home opener with Glasgow. The intensity was where it should be. The players are clearly learning each other. Additionally, the little attitude issues I noted in December appear to be gone and the girls are simply going out there and playing the game. For her part, Kristin Caldwell is looking both more relaxed and more in control of things than before.

Why, then, did they lose by ten? For one thing, defensive lapses still haunt the team. Their full-court press looked great as St. Mark’s was moving from baseline to halfcourt, but it was a failure once the Spartans got the ball to anyone in the key. At that point, it was two on one or worse. Other than the problems with the press, Caravel defended well on other possessions and have clearly made adjustments since the season began.

Offensively, Caravel missed a lot of shots. They also showed an inclination to rely a little too heavily on pounding the ball inside, rather than varying their attack with a more diverse shot selection. The result was a St. Mark’s team that confidently camped out underneath and knew what was coming. Perhaps the Caravelians don’t have good outside shooters. Passing and ball movement showed flashes of St. E’s-like brilliance, but they lacked the consistency of being able to do it all the time like the Lady Vikes.

St. Mark’s is another team that has puzzled me this year. I thought they’d be so much stronger than they’ve been. Sure, they’ve had injuries, but who hasn’t? Caravel is missing Charnelle Bacon. Padua has missed Carli Sabol for a stretch of games. Still, I expected more from St. Mark’s. In this latest game, the St. Markians showed Caravel how to deliver a mixed offensive strategy. The only threes of the night came from the green and gold. They also ran what I call an end-around give-and-go that has become almost a trademark play of theirs this year. And there were typical drives of the lane. But that’s what’s so interesting about St. Mark’s. They work with what they have. They don’t bite off more than they can chew with a game plan that is beyond their ability to execute. On the down side, St. Mark’s has had trouble with an on again/off again anemic scoring production.

Senior guard, Christina Rivituso, and junior, Stephanie Nichols, each had 13 for St. Marks, followed closely by Jeanne Knowles who had 10. Knowles went down hard like a sack of potatoes under the basket after some sort of collision, but didn’t seem to be seriously injured – although things looked scary for a couple of minutes. For Caravel, only Brittani Shells reached double-digits – and just barely – by posting 10 points. Senior point guard, Ashley Steele, contributed another 9 tallies.

Pay attention to these two teams. Neither are perfect. Both have a list of things they should work on. But, it very well may come to pass that either or both of them will make it to the Final Four of the State Tournament. And once you get there, anything can happen. …Unless Elena is having a good night.

DelGirlsHoops@aol.com

Jim Charles

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Shannon Says

January 2, 2007

On Opening Night of the Diamond State Classic, I had the good fortune to catch up with Shannon Elliott. Shannon is one of the all-time greatest players to ever come out of Padua Academy. She scored over 1000 points, was a first team All-State player, and is now a red shirt freshman at Villanova. Shannon is everything that is right about girls’ and women’s basketball. She never drew attention to herself. Never sought or craved the limelight. Through her character and playing style, she earned the respect and admiration of her teammates, opponents, and the local press.

Basketball State of the Union, 2006-2007

December 28, 2006

Most of you know by now that I usually write about particular games or a particular team.  But in this installment, I thought I'd share with you some of my wacky ideas on the sport we all love so much: Basketball.

What do I like about the game?  The energy, the intensity, the athleticism, the strategies, the emotion...  All things that I'm sure appeal to most fans of the sport.  Particularly, I enjoy Girls and Women's Basketball.  The male version of the sport has become too physical, too selfish, too "trash talky", and too "thuggy" (if that's even a word).  And then there's the dunk.  Never having dunked a basketball myself, I'm not all that familiar about the skill involved.  However, it looks like once you have the height to do it, it's fairly easy to pull off.  Certainly, actual shooting from the floor is a lot more difficult.  So, I like the female version of the sport because, without the dunk, all the points are scored the hard way - by actual shooting skills.  Also, girls and women play the sport the way good old Mr. Naismith had in mind when he invented it back in 1891.  Girls play a team game.  Sometimes, too much so!  Many a girls team's coach has been left exasperated at how often his (or her) players pass up open shots so that a teammate may shoot the ball instead.  Still, I'd rather watch this exercise in ultra-democracy than to witness the in-your-face, tackle brand the guys play.

Pet Peeves

In the local high school scene, it never ceases to amaze me about the size of many head coaches' egos.  Every coach, or nearly every coach, thinks he or she is a certified genius.  They also think that there's just one right way to coach - their way.  Coaches!  Time for a reality check.  You're high school coaches, for crying out loud!  If you're damned lucky and coach at a generous school, you might make $2,000 or $3,000 dollars a year for your trouble.  More often, you'll be lucky if what they pay you offsets your expenses.  If you all were the geniuses you make yourselves out to be, you'd be coaching NCAA Division I or the pros.  Another problem with coaches: They make basketball seem so complex!  My own coaching approach has always been to break it down to its simplest elements.  It's not rocket science.  It's simply putting a big ball through a bigger hoop more times than the other team.  It's not the Normandy Invasion.  It's not the moon landing.  Some of the best basketball I've ever seen has been neighborhood pick-up games where there are no coaches anywhere around.  Just kids playing.  They understand the game.  They don't need us to complicate it for them.

Okay, I just gave it to the coaches, how about the parents?  While most parents are well-behaved in the stands, some bad apples give moms, and particularly dads, a bad name.  How does riding a referee help anything?  Then there's these dads who all think their daughter is the next Elena Delle Donne.  Worse, they act like they're their daughter's agent!  Woe the poor coach that has to deal with these out of control dads!  Can't a dad simply be the nice guy in the stands who cheers on the team and who otherwise keeps his mouth shut?  More gripes about parents: Ignorance of the game.  How many times are we at games where there's some ill-informed mom or dad screaming, "Three seconds!!!  Three seconds!!!"?  Most of the time, there are shots going up when the parents are pleading for the call.  Problem is the ref's internal three-second clock resets to zero on each shot, per the rule.  Parents don't understand that.  If you don't know the rule, shut up!

Speaking of the rules, here are some that gotta go or get changed:

• Three in the key.  Dumb rule.  Get rid of it.  If the offense wants to camp out in the paint, let them.

• Redefine all blocking fouls so that the person that was most responsible for the contact gets the foul, rather than having it go 95% of the time to the defender.  In conjunction with this, delete all references to "clear path to the basket."

• No "mercy rules."  In real life, how often do we get "mercy rules"?  Not very.  Imagine in golf if the leader were forced to miss a few putts to let the pack catch up, or if a sprinter was made to purposely slow down to let the rest of the field get closer.  The whole idea behind mercy rules is to get scores as close to a tie as possible.  That is such a perversion of sports!  I don't want to see a team get senselessly slaughtered in a mis-match, but control of the score should come from the class and sportsmanship of the winning team - not through a mandated rule.

• No "mandatory play rules" beyond 5th and 6th grade.  Personally, I want to see every kid play every game.  But not because a rule forces a coach to do that.  It has to come from the coach.  Again, real life has no mandatory play rules.  Sports shouldn't either.

NBA/WNBA rules that have to go:

• Ball advancement after a timeout.  Imagine in football if the team with the ball got an extra 30 yards when it called a timeout.  That's how crazy this rule is.

• One-shot technicals.  If it's only worth one shot, think about doing away with the infraction altogether.

• One-and-one on second team foul within last two minutes of a period.  Hey?  Could we slow the game up even more?!?

New rule idea:

• In the last two minutes of the 4th quarter and the last two minutes of every overtime period, the team being fouled (usually the team that is winning) has the option of taking the shots (in the case of one-and-ones or double-bonus) or inbounding the ball as though it were not a shooting foul.   ...Or...  In the last two minutes of the 4th quarter and the last two minutes of every overtime period, the team being fouled (usually the team that is winning) gets one point automatically awarded to it AND possession of the ball.  The idea of all this is to end the intentional fouling strategy that is so common.

I'm not going to write much about the Diamond State Classic because, quite frankly, the News Journal will cover it much better than my ability to.

Up next:  My conversation with Padua Academy alumna and Villanova basketball player, Shannon Elliott.