Uptempo 66, Generation 52

Welcome back to live session of hoops down in my stomping grounds. With the NRF league being NYC based, I know a lot of people were hyped to watch the New York Knicks beat the Spurs on Tuesday. Congrats to fans of the orange, white and blue. To my surprise, the first half of game one looked a lot like NYK v. Spurs with seemingly everyone on both teams knocking down well guarded shots. Scott Williams was up to his usual blend of fast past pushing; to foul line extend jumpers in the half court setting. But Team Generation was able to match his onslaught, shot for shot behind Joe Branch (15 points, six rebounds, six assists) and Weston Spotts (12 points, eight rebounds) who combined for 16 first half points. Towards the end of the half, Williams went away from scoring and got his teammates involved with back to back backdoor passes to Jarek Carethers (14 points, seven rebounds) and hitting Nick Blatchford (12 points) for open jumpers. Carethers capped the late effort run with a fall-away jimmy to put Uptempo up 35-20 at halftime.

Uptempo opened up the lead (41-29) early in the second half and Team Generation broke out a seldom used 2-2-1 full court press. The length of Dan Solomito, who had 16 points and five rebounds on the night, (here’s a perfect opportunity to let everyone know that No Homo is done in 2011. That’s a normal basketball analogy and is obviously talking about Dan’s height and how tall he is with his hands up. We’re all grown men and we’ve seen the “who’s girl is this,” fly ladies that come to watch NRF, so no one’s rep is on the line. However, pause may be applied to several situations and has been around since Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt like Raf, Ka$h, PR and myself discussed via twitter and Justin and Looch said over email. No homo=dunzo. Thanks.) caused problems for Uptempo, who couldn’t get over the top of the middle of the zone, leading to a 5-0 run (41-43, Uptempo). But Williams and Blatchford kept their composure, breaking the press and having Carethers leak out behind the zone, eventually forcing Generation out of it. After a subpar season so far for Uptempo, the energy was there tonight, as they forced turnovers and built a 20 point lead in the game. Team Generation managed to cut the lead to 10 with 2:30 left but there was reasonable doubt that Willams would let Uptempo lose. With his 32 points, five assists and five steals, he was feelin’ it and led Uptempo to a much needed win, 64-52.

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