A
s we sat in
my room
after Incident
2013, talking about the
year we had, captain Abilash and I had the same questions in our
heads – how was the basketball team going to fare next year? We
were both very calm, but I had never felt such pressure in my life.
Being captain put fear into me; fear of being disliked by my players, fear of indiscipline in the team, fear of being an inadequate
player, fear of failure. The time had finally arrived. It was my time
to deliver on all the promises that I had made to myself over the
last three years. Just as he was leaving, he gave me a picture that
used to hang on his wall – a picture of three of the best players in
the world - Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. Behind the picture was a message from him - ‘Always remember the
legacy…’. This is the story of how we continued a legacy passed
on to us.
Every year we say goodbye to people who have been like family to the team. However, for this current set of players, no loss
could compare to bidding adieu to our former captain, Abilash
Krishnan(Abu) – a 6’3” 220 lb center who was invaluable to the
team, and crucial to its style of play. With Abu leaving, the team
suffered a dearth of giants to man the baseline and this was going
to affect our tried and tested strategy. But starting the new year
of ball, I was blessed with a few new additions to the team. They
would turn out to be exactly what I needed to take our game to the
next level.
One of the most important tenets that I wished to enforce was
discipline. The first 20 days of practice included only running. We
ran from the court to the beach and back, twice! The team responded with a lot of gusto and completed the stamina requirements that
were set upon them. Several team members who had previously not
even been on the squad, like Ankit Raj for instance, still adhered to
the system most religiously. I was motivated by their enthusiasm.
This spurred me on and convinced me that I was making the right
decision.
My next task was to identify potential in the team and help cultivate that talent in my players. I also needed to understand the roles
my players were capable of undertaking and push them in those
respective directions. For instance, I believed that my game was better suited as a shooting guard rather than a ball handler. But at the
same time I noticed that Tawfeeq Ahmed had extremely good court
vision and I encouraged him to be the primary ball handler of the
team. I believed in encouragement through praise and that’s exactly
what I did to guide my players ahead.
60
The Shoreline
The strength of our team lies
in defense, the defensive 2-3 zone to be precise. This defensive style
was something we had worked on and imbibed from our previous
captain. However I felt that there was still tremendous scope for
improvement. We studied and explained our plays to each other
on a whiteboard. These sessions were one of the most interesting
and inquisitive times of practice, as we spent time poring over the
board debating the merits of various maneuvers. For the first leg of
most of the odd semester, we concentrated primarily on defensive
drills and communication. “Talent wins games but teamwork wins
championships” was my motto, and I aimed to ingrain this in the
minds of all my players.
Though we all knew by now what we had to do, we also needed
to be at our highest level of physical fitness to be able to execute
our own plays. I put the team through one of the most grueling
practice regimes they had ever experienced during their entire time
in college. As much as the routines were well designed, I also had
to contend with the fact that I had to keep my players interested and
have them enjoying what they did.
Our first tournament of the season was the James Naismith
tournament at Mangalore. We were able to win that tournament
solely because of our defensive strength. I gauged that the team
was skilled enough to be intuitive on offense and I trusted their
offensive creativity. Several of the members of the team were still
warming up to their positions on the court, resulting in the offense
being a little shaky at times. This tournament made me realize the
problems we were facing offensively. That’s when I introduced
our first offensive set play “Yoyo”. It was a good counter, which
worksed based on exploiting the weaknesses in the zone defense.
The win at Naismith was a monumental one for us. It was the
first non-home tournament we had won in 2 years and this completely boosted our confidence. But we were far from the winning team we are today. The next few tournaments left us a little perturbed. Having come runners up, losing to home teams at
the NITTE as well as Yenapoya tournaments, left me wondering
about my methods and their effectiveness. We were not pushing
or a dvancing the ball fast enough and the offensive plays were not
implemented with the same speed and intensity as they were done
in practice.
We were getting really confident with all the practice and were
easing into each others’ games. The team was built on a “next man