Eric, Shane and Manny formed a team to compete in the Battle of the Bell 3v3 Tournament.  We started at Pulaski Park at noon, hung around a couple hours while the girls games got underway and then got rained out.  The games were transferred to Beekman Gym and the boys matches began about 3:30pm amid hot humid conditions and wet slippery floors. The boys started slow and it seemed like a blowout was in the making as the Westmoreland Swim team aggressively drove the lane for layups.  After being slapped alongside the head they rallied, losing by 3 points.  The 2nd game they defeated a much heralded Utica D-Squad by making their outside shots and taking advantage of size mismatches inside.  The 3rd game vs Rome Select followed a similar strategy by making shots and posting up Dale and Drew when possible. The 4th game vs Pushovers got a little chippy as Shane got pushed a few times and retaliated by shoving the player to the floor.  An initial ejection got down graded and the game got cleaned up and  continued as the boys squeezed out another win.  Finally they ran out of energy and lost to swim team again and were eliminated from the tournament.  A good showing and fun basketball.

Eric invited his buddy Manny to join his end-of-school-year weekend; visiting RambleWild Ropes Course and the Basketball Hall of Fame.  The boys read through the circle of champions, compared their height, wingspan and vertical leap versus NBA players.  They participated in a virtual reality game, dunked on short baskets and shot from the ground floor court.

The last time we visited the HOF was October 2006 and Eric was 3.  I told Eric we should visit again when he is 23.

Rome Select played in the Battle for the 315 tournament.  Their 1^st game (9am game) was vs MV Elite and  it was an ugly game.  Rome Select trailed throughout the game and managed to put in two offensive rebounds to win 22-19.

They played Elite Performers at 11am and jumped out to an early lead – I think it was close to 20 points at one point.  In the 2^nd half Elite Performers started a full court press and ran off 12 points vs the Rome Select bench (Eric included).  Re-inserting the starters calmed the waters and the final margin of win was ~10 points.

Sunday morning Rome Select played the MV- Elite (Frankfort version) who won the Pool B in the cross over game winning by 25 points.

Rome Select ended up playing Elite Performers in the championship game, but they added a couple of additional players for the championship.  Elite Performers jumped out to a 10 point lead, Rome Select tied it before half and then Elite Performers ran off a 10 point lead right before half.  That was the story in the 2^nd half.  Rome Select made a run cut the lead to 10 and then Elite Performers would counter and run it back up.  The final margin of victory was in the teens. Overall a good weekend, but I think everyone walked away disappointed because they lost that last game.  On to Saratoga and the Adidas Hoop Summit.

Eric tried out for the 7th grade basketball team along with 30 other boys.  Coach Scott Parsons kept 14 boys and created two 7 man teams for their competitions.  Dylan, Shane and Dennis form the core of the ‘A’ team with Luke, Michael and Eric the core of the ‘B’ team.  After upsetting Frankfort, they beat Sherburne badly.  Sherburne led in Q1, but had a disabled point guard and their B team was unable to score while HP ran up the score for the remaining three quarters.

Snow conditions forced re-scheduling of Tuesday’s game vs Canastota.  Thursday night the Utica Academy of Science brought a good 8th grade team.  UCS had a very good point guard on their A team while their B team featured an extremely tall center (#12) and a good forward (#15).  HPMS eked out a close win to push their record to 3-0.