After a dominating start, Sweet Home’s boys narrowly lost, 59-58, to Crook County on the road Friday night in basketball.
The Huskies built a monster 16-2 lead early on and finished the first quarter leading 17-2.
“We started off really strong,” said Coach Drew Emmert. “The second quarter, they started coming back. A few calls didn’t go our way, and they had a few big shots to cut it to eight.”
The Huskies led 30-22 at halftime.
“In the second half, they went into a half-court trap, and we turned it over quite a few times,” Emmert said. Crook County had bounced back to a 10-point lead with just 2:30 left on the third-quarter clock. By the end of the quarter, the Huskies cut the Crook County lead to 38-35. They cut the lead to one point by the end of the game.
“We’re one or two possessions away from having a good record,” Emmert said. “Our guys have shown every big game that we’re up to the challenge.”
They play close against the best, he said, and they haven’t really had any blowout losses.
They have just got “to figure out how to close those games,” he said. “We have to take that step, and we haven’t taken it this year.”
Friday night, “(Justin) Tow played really good,” Emmert said. “He filled up the stat book.”
Keanu Aiona led scoring with 24 points.
Sweet Home 17 13 5 23 – 58
Crook County 4 18 16 21 – 59
Sweet Home scoring: Keanu Aiona 24, Justin Tow 14, Tyler Plebuch 7, Daniel Virtue 7, Jake Bangot 3, Justin Carpenter 1, Logan Kline, Keegan Holly.
Crook County scoring: Blake Bartels 23, Kessi 12, Mozingo 7, Harper 6, Shannon 4, Dalton 3, Lapsley 2, Langley 2, Andaluz.