CanAm Game 1

CanAm Series Game 1. It wasn't pretty. Not for us. I don't really want to get into the details for just that reason--for reasons of pride. I don't want to pretend to be objective and write a "newsy" blog about this game. I could go into what we did wrong, all the little nuances of the game we failed to pick up on, how we didn't play to our strengths or follow our plan. We're doing enough analysis now and I don't want to bog down my blog with any more of it.

The truth is we have a tendency to over-analyze. As competitors, we are very critical, especially of ourselves, and we strive for perfection. This means we lean to the side of nit-picking. While analysis is extremely helpful, there comes a time when it's counter-productive. I don't want it to get to that point--not on my blog, not in my head and not with my team. 

So back to the game. We lost. By a rather large margin. I think, for the most part, the general mood is one of bewildered anger. It seems like we were caught off guard, like Canada hit us with a quick one-two then didn't let us get our guard up. 

One of my old basketball coaches would, when we erred in our offense or made the wrong defensive decision, yell at us, "Figure it out." We are now trying to figure it out--figure out just what went wrong. And what I think we're finding is that we simply weren't ourselves. Not much analysis needed there. On Saturday, in our revenge-game, we need to be our old aggressive, smart, defensively dominant selves, and then things will be better. It's as simple as that.