the hospitality at the Dog Pound.
in my list of excuses why i lost the game, playing on that miserable court is at the top of the list. poorly lit, baskets uneven, a dismal crowd more interested in preening for themselves than watching high-caliber basketball (something they haven't seen for years), plus a drum-and-bugle corp from a local middle school as halftime entertainment? A pre-game spread of quarters to a vending machine in the hallway? Showers that only dribbled out a miserable stream of cold water?
second on my list: stupid coaching. i have been playing this game too long to be learning fundamentals. I set a starting five, but left the rest of the lineup blank -- you know, not wanting to restrict "Let Coach Decide" about substitutions. For reasons I am beginning to see, my team does not match up well against the Cacti, and i thought letting the AI make court-side decisions would be worth a shot. What happened instead was the coach, unless forced by fouls, refused to even consider changing the lineup. Where I had put blanks, he saw nothing. I think this partially accounts for that fourth quarter collapse and certainly for a miserable distribution of minutes for the squad.
All kidding aside, the Cacti were going to win, regardless, because over the past several seasons i have tried everything and produced the same result. Now i have just one more notch for another failed tactic.
