PART TWO- "the first game"
8/9/98 We've been practicing for more than six weeks and somehow I still expected the guys I jokingly called the Ouidah Mojo to show up on time for the first and only basketball game of our season. For my part, I was early, as I am for just about everything but especially things that excite me.
The game was scheduled to start at 5 PM so I'd asked my players to get there at 4 o'clock. I'd hoped we could spend some time going over our offense and getting warmed up before the other team showed up. Two of my players showed up at 10 after four. The entire team from Comé piled out of a clean white pickup at 4:15 and the rest of my team players trickled in over the next 45 minutes as if on their way to no place at all. As each of them walked towards the court I ran the distance between us and asked as sarcastically as possible if they were sick. I am, after all, the coach and, although just one day after the fact I still don't really know how or what, yesterday I think I learned something about motivation.
My players mostly gave me queer looks when I bitterly asked about their health,
one gave some sort of excuse that I 
didn't
really bother to understand, but all of them knew I was upset. I'd been trying
to get these guys to work together as a team over the course of the last two
months. This was the only chance we would most likely ever get to see the results
of our effort and in the beginning it didn't look like we were going to put
on much of a show.
The other team had been together for about eight months, during which time they'd been coached to something like a 6-1 record by a fellow Peace Corps volunteer. Tucker, their coach, had incidentally, attended the University of North Carolina at the same time I was there. In the weeks leading up to the match I always mentioned this odd coincidence to whoever I was presently trying to convince to come cheer on the home team. During the pre-game warm ups I tried to gage our chances of victory but had a tough time getting past the fact that our team didn't even assume a semblance of structure until about 15 minutes before the game was scheduled to start.
Once the game was underway both teams had a tough time scoring any points for the first few minutes and I spent most of the first quarter trying to get out players to execute the offense. The team from Comé was built around a giant from Nigeria who couldn't speak any French or any local languages but managed to score at least 20 of their 46 points. They worked the ball around the perimeter once or twice every possession and lobed it into the big man who was built like an oak and had no problem moving my team out of his way on the way to the hoop. He also got fouled often and called a lot of them without missing too many of his shots.
I put a great deal of verbal energy into my players by jumping all over them when they failed to employ at least a semblance of the offense we'd been running in practice. The yelling worked in spells and there were several stretches of four or five possessions in a row where we ran our offense and scored on every possession. After every such stretch things would suddenly fall apart without any apparent explanation. We'd throw the ball away, or take an awful shot and I'd have to start yelling again. During the time-outs and in between quarters I'd yell a bit more and talk about our lack of patience and after virtually every such occasion our team would regroup and we'd score a couple of baskets without any problems.
The final score was Ouidah 55 and Comé 46. We won the game and it felt as good as it ever has. I'd insisted all along that we'd win or lose as a team and I wasn't surprised when I was right.