Thursday, December 15, 2005

Toubro for MVP...

I had a good chance to think about last night’s loss as we drove home from Copenhagen. It hit me lot harder than a lot of other losses that I have ever been a part of. Partly because we were so thoroughly manhandled, partly because it was such an important game and partly because it has been a long, long time since I have participated in a loss, almost two years actually.

But there was no doubt that Gentofte was a far better team than us last night. They had a great game plan (and I admit that part of it was leaving Stewart wide open, so if any other teams want to use that tactic they are welcome to it), they were excited to play and they executed well. That being said, we had several chances to score points but it seemed like almost every time that we picked a ball up in defense and tried to transition it, they would just block whoever was hitting. Whether I was choosing the wrong people to set to or whether their block was just that good doesn’t really matter. In the end the match wasn’t close, and the scores reflect that.

Mads Toubro was the best player on the court by far. I would say that he changed the whole complexion of the match in the first set. It seemed like everytime we threatened to push our lead to more than two points they could rely on him to put a difficult ball away, no matter if there were two or three blockers waiting for him. His serving was also good. So, hats off to Gentofte, I hope that you play as well as you did last night in the finals! And hopefully next time we play each other, we can give you guys some competition.

Now, on to us. After playing Middelfart (in training) and Gentofte in the last few days I think it is fairly obvious that they are the two teams to beat at this point in the season. There is no doubt in my mind that they are a class above us right now and that we have a lot of hard work ahead of us if we want to reach that level. Hopefully with the LONG break until the first match after Christmas we will have time to get in the gym and work on our problems. And there is a long list to go through.

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