Top Ten from the coach's wife

Yeah, yeah, I know all of you are sick of having us rub the whole basketball thing in your faces. But I just can't resist sharing a few factoids about this year's team.

10. Last year's B team was barely .500 in their win-loss record. This year's B team was .932 (41-3).

9. Only five players from last year's B team were on this year's B team.

8. Of the top 32 6th grade teams in last weekend's state tournament, only Woodbury and Champlin Park were represented by two teams. The Woodbury A team finished second in the top AAAAAA bracket, behind Champlin Park (with their 6'4" giant). Champlin Park's B team lost two of their three games in the AAAAA bracket and were finished after the first day of play.

7. Woodbury 6B beat the 4th and 16th seeds (Minneapolis South and Centennial) of the top bracket during regular season play, and lost to the 5th seed (Prior Lake) by a basket in the final seconds of another game. These little details goad Jeff into endless speculation on how his team would have performed in the top bracket.

6. You can play some of the players most of the time, but you can't play any of the players all of the time. The 6B team had probably the most equalized amount of playing time for all of its players throughout the season than any other team they played against. While many teams had a few players that were out on the court nearly the entire game, 6B usually played its entire bench, substituting freely and often. They had GREAT depth.

5. At the coaches' seeding meeting for the state tournament several weeks ago, Jeff didn't lobby to be seeded at any particular level. The Woodbury 6B was nominated into the second highest bracket by an Eden Prairie coach, whose team Woodbury beat twice in the regular season. He wanted Woodbury moved up out of their bracket where Woodbury was originally slotted to play. The move made the EP team the number one seed in their bracket.

4. The EP team noted in 5 (above) finished fourth in their bracket (insert smirk here).

3. Enroute to their first place finish, Woodbury beat #4 Eastview, #2 Wayzata, and #1 Eden Prairie (a different EP team than the one previously mentioned).

2. Exchange allegedly overheard between coaches from #1 EP and #2 Wayzata after the first day of play: "We'll see you in championship game." Maybe what they meant was, "We'll see you (lose to Woodbury) in the championship game."

And now, the most amazing factoid:

1. Jeff was not the designated head coach of the team.

Yep, it's true. Despite plannning and executing all the practices, strategizing all the plays for the games, and basically devoting himself to developing each of these players to be the best they could be, Jeff was not officially recognized by the Woodbury Athletic Association as the head coach of the team. When he interviewed for the job, Jeff had two years of coaching experience to offer, in addition to his years of playing high school and college basketball. Plus, he has a job that gets him home every night and every weekend, making him available for every practice and every game. But for reasons unknown, WAA instead offered the position to another parent who had no coaching experience and had only played high school basketball. This parent acknowledged that his job took him out of town frequently and he would need a co-coach. Jeff became the de facto coach, but was not the one designated by WAA.

Maybe next year they'll get a clue.