Brad started playing school basketball last year. He also played with a AAU team called the Clear Lake hoyas. he loves basketball and I love watching him play. he plays so hard and is such a team player. When he was in city basketball he was very tall and still is, so I made him a post. Well I shouldn’t have I should have let him handle the ball more. He has really done a great job improving his dribbling skills. While playing in 7th grade he played hard and was one of the guards. He had an ok shot but his left hand needed to be fixed and he has done a good job of trying to get that done.

He started 7th grade great. Him and Garrett Pinnault were the two guards. Brad would slash the lane and shoot some 3’s. In fact againest pearland west he had 12 points by shooting a bunch of threes and driving the lane. We won that game big. He had a great year and improved and continued to love basketball.  After the season was over he still wanted to play more. We found the Hoyas team and tried out for them. they already had a team set for the 7th graders so we played with a younger group. Brad was the main one on the team and played almost every minute. The only thing was he played post but still worked on improving his jumper and ball handling. With that team we traveled a bit. Mostly around north houston but we did get to go to san antonio on our last tournament. That is when brad played but had mono. Whish we didn’t know until we got home. We were on the way to san antonio and he said his stomach hurt. We got him something to eat and he said it felt a little better. At the hotel the night before he was nauseas but wanted to play. He went to bed struggled to play the next day and had to be taken out some cause his stomach was hurting. We gave him pepto abd other things to help his stomach but nothing helped. He did feel some better in the room and me and Tres even went down to the river walk and to Dick’s last resort and he seemed to be ok there but didn’t eat much. We finished the weekend and headed home. He played great the last day and we thought he was getting over his bug. When we got home ww took him to the redi-clinic. He tested positive for mono and they sent us to Dr. Don. Yep!!! he had mono. Soooooo two things , he is a tough SOB and we are bad parents LOL. Well that basketball season was over. He did get to meet a rocket great in Mario Elie. He played against his son one game that summer. He was also playing in a pasadena league with his teammates from jr high so he had to miss the last couple of games.

ok now mono is an ass kicking sickness. Brad didn’t eat and slept about 18 hours a day. He lost probably 16 pounds. It was very miserable and lasted about 2-3 weeks. He finally felt good enough to eat and we went to waffle house and you can see what he ate in this pic.

7th grade season was over summer was over and 8th grade started and we will post about football later. This is basketball to get caught up to 9th grade. So 8th garde basketball I could tell Brad was so much more confident and better and handling the ball and shooting. The only thing is he would get soooooo nervous sometimes in games and not shoot good. But he was a great overall player. He passed the ball and rebounded and played tremendous defensive. I recall againest BJH he was covering their point guard and he was a very good player. We beat them and Brad worked his butt off all game holding the guy down. the high school coaches were there and Ryan Bright the JV coach even went up to Brad and told him he enjoyed watching him play defense and he worked very hard. that made Brad’s night. They season went on and we were 4-0 in zone play. We had a game againest DPJH for the zone championship. Ofcourse Malcolm and Devin played on that team and it was going to be tough. Me and another dad put a team together and played some tournaments to basically get ready for that game.

In the DPJH game we played great and game out strong getting a 7 point lead. Brad played great and so did the entire team. We played as such a team and unselfsih it was fun to watch. At the end of the game  they were making a run coming back. It was a 4 point lead and luke shaper stole the ball. Brad went back to defend, Luke was going full speed and Brad stepped in front and took the charge and we got the ball. Went down the court and Brad got fouled and made 2 free throws to put us up by 6 with 5.7 seconds. Malcolm went and made a 3 at the buzzer  and we won. It was a great team win and Brad played great. He had 6 points and and played good in every aspect of the game. and he also took a charge. It was also bittersweet because we had to beat his two best friends Malcolm and Devin but we will all be back together next year. The last Jr high basketball will be played this weekend at the district tournament. Brad will then play for the Clippers which is an AAU team. I will post more about that later. I will end just by saying I love watching how hard Brad plays and how smart he is about the entire game and he is such a team player.

Ya’ll be safe out there!!!!!