The glue

When a sports season ends, coaches from the conference and the state meet to decide who were the standout players, to honor them with All-Conference and All-State kudos.

In basketball, there are 16 players from the East and 16 from the West who get the nod for All-Conference, and then from those lists, 14 players make the cut for the All-State team.

To earn a spot on either of those lists, players need to have made a significant impact on the court.

When considering the long list of potential honorees, coaches will sometimes look at stats to see how each player has contributed to the success of his or her team.

They look at how many points per game they averaged, how many rebounds, how many steals and assists, and they can see a portrait of a player sketched out among the numbers.

However, what they don’t see is what can’t be tracked and put on paper, and that is how the rest of the player’s team contributed to the success of that player and the team as a whole.

After the 2025 post-season honors were made public, Dogie head coach Allen Von Eye honored on Facebook his players who were named to the team and those who received Honorable Mention — they garnered several votes, just not enough to be among the top 16 players in the conference.

But then, he posted again on Facebook honoring the “glue” of his team. In case you didn’t see it, this is what Von Eye said:

“Today we celebrate all the ‘glue’ guys that help us to be a complete team. These guys also put in the work. More than 30 morning skills/shooting sessions were put in by this crew during our season. That means 30 extra mornings that they came in, got up shots, worked skills, and committed themselves before going to practice in the afternoon.”

I loved that post. We so often focus our attention on only the top players who lead the team in scoring and other stat lines. Obviously, they are vital to the success of a team. However, they don’t get those numbers without the help of every other player on the court.

There’s the player that plays outstanding defense, the
one you task with guarding the toughest player on the other team.

There’s the guy who has the uncanny ability to inbound the basketball. It takes real awareness to be able to see every opportunity to get the ball into play within the time limit and to do so to the team’s greatest advantage.

There’s the guy who knows what his teammate is going to do without having to be told, and does what he can do to advance that teammate’s play. For example, sealing defenders away from the basket so his teammate can drive to the rack unhindered.

There’s the guy who makes excellent passes, seeing open looks and delivering the ball with precision.

There’s the guy who comes in off the bench to give players a much-needed breather and does good things for the team while he is out there.

There’s the guys who don’t just sit on the bench, but encourage their teammates on the floor, knowing that without their contribution in practice and in games, those players will not have the success that they do.

The contributions of these players don’t show up on the stat sheet, but without them, no one shows up on the stat sheet.

So here’s to the “glue guys.” They are just as important to any program as the All-Conference and All-State guys and they, too, deserve kudos for their efforts.