Ohio's Tate coaches the Yuggernauts to a 1-0 start
TLDR: The Yuggernauts won Game 1 of their new rec league season under first-year coach Ohio's Tate, then spent 2 days defending the coach, the owner and the clock-milking from the internet.
Tate is a real coach. He ran the girls' program at Granville High School for years before Barstool, and he came into Wednesday night's opener with a full scouting report on his own roster.
Notes: - Ronny Doitche is a Top 5 player in the program, but we do not want to play 3 posts at once (at least for now). We plan to rotate him, Dana, and Rick continuously and run a 2 post Pick & Roll / High-Low offense - Turnovers and/or lack of true PG is our biggest roster issue. I am handing the keys to Bosanko tonight. I trust Ebo. - Mikey Bets (Water Manager) has been ruled OUT for tonight’s game. The players will be in charge of their own waters - Steven Cheah’s illness really hurts the depth tonight. We cannot, by any means, need to count on Kody.
Look at it. A 2-post high-low offense. Ebo given the keys at point guard. The Water Manager, Mikey Bets, ruled OUT, so the players handled their own waters. And the line about Kody's minutes, which would turn out to be the most accurate prediction anyone made all week. The game tipped late that night and streamed on Dana Beers' YouTube channel, and Tate's warning when they went live was that the Yugs might have drawn the short straw in Week 1.
They hadn't. The Yuggernauts led at the half, and once they had a lead and a running clock, Tate went to his favorite move: subbing guys in and out at every free throw to burn time. Big Cat, who owns the team and threatened before tipoff to find better players if they didn't start winning, called it like an owner would.
It worked. The final horn went and a team that went 0-6 last season was celebrating at center court like it had won a title.
Nicky Smokes put the turnaround in the cleanest terms. Last year they lost by 30 a night. This year, by his count, they beat a team that would've smoked them by 50 and won by 10. He gave the credit to the guy holding the clipboard.
Coaching matters, last year we lost every game by 30 and then Coach Cat stepped in and we lost to the best team in the league by 2. This year we beat a team that woulda smoked us by 50 last year by 10. Thank you Coach @OhioTate all the boys bought in, just the beginning. Good night!
Every good win has a bench guy, and this one had Kody. He got into the game, and that's about all he can say. The box score the Yak put up had him at 1 minute and zeros everywhere else. Kody said it was 10 seconds by coach's decision. Tate disputed even that, said there's no way it was a full 10, and called it a trillion that Mark Titus would be proud of.
By Thursday the jokes had turned into a debate. Not everybody loved a rec league team with a coach, an owner, film study and a clock-management plan. Titus and Brandon Walker took it to Mostly Sports and went after Connor Griffin and the Yugs for treating men's league like it was March.
Griffin didn't back down. He didn't take a single shot all night, and he spun it like a true system guy: the bigs have a huge size advantage, so why hoist a 3 you can get anytime? 'I don't need stats. I need wins' is a great line from someone who logged 0 field goal attempts.
Yes, I didn’t shoot once last night. But the whole offense is about getting the ball down low to our bigs who have a HUGE size advantage. Why hoist up a 3 that we can get anytime instead of working it around for a good look in the paint? I don’t need stats. I need wins. #Yugs
Then came the comparison that got to the coach. The new Viva TV covered the start of the Coach Moore era, and Dana Beers started a line with 'Going from Mikey Bets to Tate is like...' You'll have to watch it for the rest. Tate called it one of the kindest things anyone has ever said about him.
This is one of the kindest things anyone has ever said about me. Thank you @danabeers
So the Yuggernauts are 1-0, the coach is up late watching film, the bench guy is blogging from the end of the bench, and the outrage over a rec team taking itself seriously is the best content the team has made. Dana says scorebugs, mics and maybe announcers are coming to the stream. Game 2 shows whether the Yugs can win twice, or whether 1 win was enough to start the dynasty talk.
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