Sweet Home boys basketball lost two home games against teams ranked in the top six in the state in 4A last week, as well as a road game against No. 28-ranked Molalla. The three losses, all in non-league contests, dropped the Huskies to 1-4 on the season.
The game at Molalla (1-2) on Dec. 6 ended in gut-wrenching fashion for Sweet Home.
Senior guard Dylan Luttmer hit three clutch free throws with three seconds left in the game to put his team up one. But then Molalla senior guard Kyle Chavez caught the ball inbounds, sprinted the length of the floor, and hit a shot at the buzzer off of one foot near the three-point line to win the game 37-36 for the Indians. Sweet Home guard Evan Towry was closely guarding Chavez for the duration of the play.
“(Towry) was so close on him I thought they might call a foul,” Head Coach Drew Emmert said. “I was glad they didn’t, but then obviously it didn’t matter because he made the shot.”
“It was just a one in a hundred shot that happened to go in,” Emmert said of the Indians’ late game theatrics. “The chances he makes that again are much to nothing. It is what it is. It’s one of those things where you played well and tip your hat to him for making that shot.”
He was pleased with his team’s performance overall in the game. “We actually played really well. That’s a decently long trip for us and they’re a good team, and we battled. We defended so well that game, and we stuck to our game plan really well.”
He noted that Molalla didn’t score a two-point field goal in the first three quarters, only scoring off two three pointers and free throws.
“We didn’t shoot very well, but we gave ourselves a good chance to win,” Emmert said.
Sweet Home shot 27.7% from the field, while Molalla shot just 21.1%. Junior Nathan Aker led the Huskies in scoring with 11 points on 3-12 shooting, also pulling down a team-high eight rebounds. Senior Von James scored nine points on 4-9 shooting, while Luttmer scored eight while going 2-7 from the field.
Then on Dec. 9, Sweet Home again lost, this time to Hidden Valley (3-2, no. 6) in a contest that wasn’t so tight. The Mustangs prevailed 53-33, shooting an impressive 50% from the field. Sweet Home shot at 33.3%.
“We haven’t played very well at home yet this year,” Emmert said. “We haven’t been as disciplined and just haven’t played as well. They did a good job of pressuring us and making it hard on us, and we just didn’t respond very well. They hit shots early, which got us out of our zone, and man to man we didn’t defend very well.”
Aker led the Huskies in scoring with 13 points on 5-9 shooting. Luttmer scored seven points on 2-6 shooting, and sophomore Josh Aker scored four points on 2-5 shooting.
The next day, hosting Phoenix (4-1, no. 5), Sweet Home lost 53-43, despite outshooting the Pirates 47.4% to 34.0% from the field.
“We shot really well, which was good because we’ve been struggling to shoot,” Emmert said. “But we had too many turnovers. They ran a one three one trap, and our guards just had too many turnovers against it. That was the thing that really hurt us.”
Indeed, the Huskies turned the ball over 21 times while only forcing nine.
Aker again led the team in scoring on a particularly hot night of shooting, collecting 17 points while going 7-9 from the field, including 2-2 from three-point territory. He led the team in rebounds with nine. James scored eight points on 3-10 shooting, and senior Riley Korn scored six while going 3-3 from the field.
The Huskies, now ranked 31st in 4A, travel to Estacada (2-1, No. 18) this week for a game at 7 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 16.
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