11-2, Bad Days can be learning experiences!

Well, the wining streak comes to an abrupt halt. The Lady Railroaders lost to the NHC today and now sit at 11-2.  We had a very tough time adjusting to the great defense of both the Homestead and Columbia City teams.  We had a terrible day shooting free throws and an equally bad day turning the ball over.  In the first game we were 8 of 20 from the line and followed that up with 6 of 16 in the second game . Both NHC teams are well coached and are very disciplined teams.

I don't usually comment on officiating.  The Railroader faithful were not thrilled with the officiating at either game (to say the least).  I have to admit when I got to the first game I noticed we had a very inexperienced officiating crew. Because of the quality of the teams playing, i knew this would be an intense game and I have to admit I was worried about the officiating from the beginning. I am not sure they had the experience of this level of game. HOWEVER, WE DID NOT LOSE THIS GAME BECAUSE OF THE OFFICIALS! We lost because we had twice as many turnovers as Homestead and shot only 40% from the free throw line. BOTH teams had exactly 20 fouls called on them. I have to admit this was a lot of fouls but the officials were calling the game equal for both sides. The final score of 52-55 could have been in our favor had we just corrected the turnover and free throw stats.

The second game we had a very experienced officiating crew.  We can disagree with some of their "untimely" calls but again they had minimal impact on our losing this game.   Our poor free throw shooting and equally poor shooting from the field (33%) had much more of an impact on our loss.   When you combine that with their rebounding advantage of 2 to 1. It's hard to blame the loss on officials.  Columbia CIty was called for 17 fouls while Garrett was only called for 14.

So, I always say when we play a perfect game and lose, then we can blame the loss on the officials. We were far from perfect today.

Hopefully we can learn from these losses today and we can correct some things to get ready for the ACAC tournament and the IHSAA tournament! We need to learn from days like this and make ourselves better!