The boys basketball team lost to Cascade 61-49 and Sisters 59-49 last week.
At Sisters on Tuesday night, “we opened the game up again not playing the way we want to play,” Coach Mark Risen said.
The Huskies trailed 12-1 in Sisters’ first run of the game, 14-8 after the first quarter and 36-20 at halftime.
The Huskies outplayed Sisters in the second half and got back into the game, Coach Risen said, but “we can’t keep digging ourselves holes that are so deep we can’t get back out of them. Like I said before, we seem to have this virus where we just don’t mentally concentrate. We’ve exhausted ourselves trying to cure it and learn to play with some kind of consistency.”
The Huskies trailed 44-37 at the end of the third quarter then outscored Sisters 18-15 for the final score.
Tim Matuszak led the Huskies in scoring with 11 points. Anthony Mink and Tyler Emmert each added 10; Matt Slauson and Ravi Patel, five; Mike Severns, three; Garret Kaufman, two; and Seth Graves, one. Sweeney led scoring for Sisters with 21 points.
Against Cascade at home Friday, the Huskies took a 13-9 lead by the end of the first quarter. They trailed 26-25 at halftime.
Late in the third quarter, Cascade built an insurmountable lead on a 6-0 run, Coach Risen said. Cascade hit free throws in the last quarter to build the final margin.
Among the Huskies’ struggles is their shooting percentage, which is running at 34 percent from the field for the season.
A .500 team will shoot 45 percent, Coach Risen said. A team that wins three-quarters of its games will shoot 50 percent. This is the first season in his six that the Huskies have shot under 50 percent.
The Huskies shoot an hour every day, Coach Risen said, but they didn’t have many players working on it in the off season.
“This day and age, you’ve got to work on your shooting year round,” Coach Risen said. Part of the reason they haven’t been shooting is because they haven’t had the time. Nine of the 11 Huskies are football players too and half are three-sport athletes.
So the team is looking for other ways to put marks in the win column, Coach Risen said.
“The bottom line is we control our own destiny,” Coach Risen said. “We know the things we’re doing wrong. We need to concentrate on fixing those.”
Against Cascade, Mink led scoring with 20 points; Seward, nine; Matuszak, eight; Slauson, eight; Graves, four; Severns, four; Severns, two; and Emmert, two. Matthews led Cascade’s scoring with 22 points.
The Huskies hold a 4-12 overall record and are 0-3 in league.
The junior varsity defeated Sisters 64-41 and Cascade 57-46. They hold a 1-0 league record.
The freshmen defeated Sisters 58-39 and Cascade 51-44. They hold a 1-0 league record.