Still in search of their first win in the 4A-3 Oregon West Conference, Sweet Home boys basketball lost two more games to league rivals last week.
In the pair of home contests, the Huskies (2-20) fell to Sisters (9-11, no. 23 in 4A) by a score of 50-25, then lost to Stayton (15-4, #5) three days later, 51-29.
Things started off promising for the Huskies against Sisters, when they jumped out to a 11-2 lead. But then the Outlaws scored 18 straight unanswered points to take a 20-11 lead into halftime.
“The second half was close, until we started pressing to try to catch up, and then they made the gap bigger,” said Head Coach Drew Emmert.
The Outlaws shot 52.6% from the field, compared to Sweet Home’s 24.3%.
Leading the scoring for the Huskies was sophomore Nathan Aker with 10 points, on 3-for-10 shooting. He went 2-for-3 from three point territory. Senior Russell Holly scored seven points on 2-for-9 shooting, while sophomore Vegas Mauer added four on a 2-for-5 effort from the field.
Against Stayton, Emmert saw positive signs from his team.
“We gave them trouble. We got stop after stop; we just couldn’t score,” the coach said.
Emmert added that the Huskies missed a lot of jump shots and close looks at the hoop. At halftime, with the score 20-10 Stayton, Sweet Home was 4-for-25 on shooting with 13 missed shots around the hoop.
“We were getting good looks within our offense. We just struggled to finish shots,” Emmert said.
Sweet Home shot 24.5% from the field compared to Stayton’s 40.4%.
The Huskies did have two double digit scorers, with Holly scoring 15 points on 6-for-21 shooting and a 2-for-3 effort from beyond the arc, and senior point guard Eddie Martinez scoring 10 points on 4-for-11 shooting while going 1-for-4 from three.
Sweet Home next faces off against Newport (8-12, #24) on the road on Friday, Feb. 18 at 5:30 p.m. in what will be the squad’s second to last game of the season.