natenica

Man I thank you. You have been a true fan to Melrose from the first time I met u. Nate thanks you for believing in him when most people did not. The surgery was a success and now we are just waiting on time. Hopefully by the end of the summer we back to rolling again. Im hoping he is feeing well tomorrow so we can go to the huge celebration in the mound. I hope you and the wife make it. It was an impressive year and other than his injury is was a perfect ending to 3 years of hard work. Most people dont realize these kids got to Melrose 3 years ago and got whooped pretty bad. They got better every year. Tribute goes out to JJ. Nate had only been playing Basketball 2 years and look how it turned out. So we are just going to let this thing run its course and get ready for NIU. I love you guys

TraderB I love that post. I had no problem with Keylon's coaching style. When u have a team as loaded as melrose and Hamilton was, u become a Manager more than a coach. You coach in pratice and get all the situations put in play and let the players run the show on game time. Keylon was good at that. It was good also that the team was senior stacked. I cant tell u all over the city I see the same stuff. Coaches yelling at the players durning a play their concentration get lost and ball get stolen. Its mad. People talk about Lawson but he will be in the record book forever. I wish more coaches would take that Phil Jackson aproach. As for melrose off the court Isssues. Point blank their are none. These are some real good kids. they stay out of trouble and do whats asked of them. They are never off the court. They pratice before games and everyday they dont have one. Thank God for the snow days. TraderB Lawson is not oaching at hamilton anymore. Hamilton downfall is not his fault. Talent went elsewhere, because of the school becoming more troubled with crime parents put their kids elsewhere. We had to make that decison when they closed SouthSide down.

Now coming from someone who has been in the program since day one I think I have prob have the best perspective. I said this on another blog and I will say it here. This prob is the game is not fun to the players anymore. Its all work. Pratice too much even on sundays, There getting burned out. When the game is no longer a game for kids u got a problem. Yea it was the players fault in the WS game. We have to shoulder some blame also. We glorify these kids, prop them up and be the first one to tear them down. Right now the players need a pick me up. Their confidence is completely shot. Knox u right the season is not over. If JJ dont find away to make the game fun to them really quick it will be. Nate is so ready to be gone. Im kinda burned out myself but we keeping the faith.

We played half court in the second half. Running in the frst half is what got the big lead.

We lost 58 - 57 after loosing a huge lead.

Dang Knoxbball. Relax tournament time coming up and I think all parties have had a reality check. Even us parents. Im looking forward to seeing how we play East tonight. They always come at us with all they got. Nate was really frustrated over last weeks stuation, but we got to move on. There have been some really good points on this post. Make u think. We just got to keep at the grind. We will prob be 3rd seed and thats a dangerous seed for anyone to play. So im looking forward to it. Hey I hope I will see u at the game tonight. I will miss fridays game at Whitehaven because Southern Miss will be here playing the University of Memphis. We doing the big Family thing since this is Candace last time playing at home. Hope to see u later. Nate Rucker

Yea it it true. We wanted to get this distraction out of the way so he could concentrate on school and getting ready for this rough season. Northern was a good fit for us because Coach Patton is know for player development. Will Smith is a prime example of that. You are right that Nate has been an undersize big. Thats because memphis players have been getting smaller and smaller since the 80s. More of a guard oriented city. So that leaves any kid thats over 6"4 playing post on most teams. We always wanted to make a decision as a family based on what school with would fit him well. Most people are only interested in big name so called high major schools. I can tell u hundreds of players that wish they had not got caught up in the name game. We turned down some high majors in order to find the best fit for him. They have a very good Computer Science dept which will be his major. Not many people talk about that part of it. The MAC conference is starting to make some noise now. Hopefull he goes up there and coaches bring out the best that he can be, and make Memphis and TN proud. Thanks knoxx for following him.

Yea yankee8589 Bama has been a nice surprise to us. Coming very hard. They usually dont do that well at getting memphis players. But I do like the School and coaching staff. They will be here this weekend to the Memphis select tournament as well as the other 2 next week We will see. /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

Thanks guys. We still are a work in progress and a lot of learning to go. But I believe hard work pays off at the end.

Thanks for all the love melrose is getting guys. Being Nate's father i try not to comment on things and just stay out of silly conversations. But sometime you have to dispell rumors. No we have not commited to Southern Miss. They have offered and it has nothing to do with candace. At this point we have quite a few offers which is a total blessing to my family to be able to get two into school for free using their god giving ability. He does let it get him down sometime about to rankings and all that, but hey these are kids not robots. Went thru the same things with candace. If you dont go to certain camps or get political with people sometime you get left out. But we are looking for a big july and with the offers we have now im very happy. I hear a lot of people talk about mid major and high major. well we got plenty of both. and some may surprise a lot of you, but in my home we look at it like this, If you can go to the so called mid major and dominate as opposed to going to a memphis or like and riding the bench for 4 years i will take mid major anyday.

We had a lot of Problems toward the end of the season. 1. We too guard Oriented. Dribble way too much. Only in the region did we start going to the post. At one point early in the preseason I was seriously thinking about taking Nate back to hamilton because of lack of post play. we take way too many jump shots and miss and the other team running back in our face. 2. defensive adjustments. when the press was not working why not fall back and play straight defense. RE ran right by us for easy shots time and time again. 3 Running got us where we were but in our losses other than RE we played to the other team strengths. Against RE Nate told me he thought some of the players was scared and they played that way. When we got tank with 2 quick fouls we did not take advantage of it. Not getting out in the corners for the 3 and the Technical foul set the stage for a serious blow out. The kids must work harder this summer to get more basketball smarts. We only lost 3 seniors. We got a good core coming back next year so there will be no excuses. Thomas, Jones, Hollimon, Telvin, Nino, Nate, Lowe and a couple very good 9th graders. Coach JJ need to take a look in the mirror and take the blame for not adjusting. But if we dont use the post game and just be a guard team, we will have this same conversation this time next year. Congrats to RE and im pulling for them to bring the big ball back to memphis.

Yea and Melrose have nothing to hold their head down for. To make that come back. If we hit 1 FT we would be talking about a diff outcome. My Son Nate Played well down the stretch in the post. Should be interesting next week.

Any Thoughts?

Very Nice. Keep Up The Good Work

No the Games will not be live because of school bandwidth limitations. I will broadcast them 1 hour after the game is over and they can be seen on demand anytime after that. The video's are streamed by using media servers. This is all done in house so we dont have to use any of that advertising crap on the site. just all melrose. Hope this answer your question