By Keeghan Gittins
For The New Era
Sweet Home’s picked up a 58–55 win over Cascade on Feb. 3, marking the Huskies’ first victory against Cascade since the 2019 season.
The Huskies struggled early, scoring just six points in the first quarter and trailing 32–18 at halftime. Sweet Home appeared out of rhythm on both ends of the floor.
“Yeah, we didn’t play very good in the first half,” Coach Drew Emmert said. “We played with low energy and looked like we expected to lose.”
After a talk with his team about their mentality, the tone shifted coming out of the locker room.
“The message at half time was not an X and O’s thing but more of a ‘we can and should compete in this game’ and we weren’t competing like we should,” Emmert said.
Sweet Home delivered a dominant third quarter, going on a 24–10 run to erase the visitors’ 18-point lead.
Sweet Home didn’t slow down in the fourth, scoring another 18 points. Thanks to some intensified defense from the hosts, Cascade was only able to score 23 combined points in the second half.
Mason Tyler, who went 0-for-5 in the first half, found his rhythm after halftime and scored 16 points in the second half to lead the come back.
“…He carried us offensively… Mason had got into foul trouble in the first half and didn’t have a rhythm. Second half, he hit a few shots early and it got him going,” Emmert said.
Damon Lawrence added another strong performance, finishing with 14 points on 64% true shooting.
“Damon has been extremely tough all year defensively, but really been huge offensively the last few weeks and Tuesday was no different. He was just solid and consistent all game.”
Kellen Hartsook and Bradyn McClure contributed efficient outings, scoring nine and 10 points respectively.
“The guys did a good job coming out of halftime with a different mentality and it showed. Our energy and intensity defensively was much better,” Emmert said.
The Huskies’ key to winning was finally being able to limit turnovers only having 13 through the whole game, compared to averting 19 throughout the rest of the season.
Sweet Home sits at, 2-3 in league and 7-11 overall, in fourth place in the Oregon West Conference, entering this week.
They host No. 10 Philomath, on Tuesday, Feb. 10. In their earlier match-up, the Huskies fell 52-49 after being up by eight with three minutes to go. However, the Warriors were missing their leading scorer from last year, Josiah Peters.
Later this week, on Feb. 13, Sweet Home will travel to No. 8 Stayton. In their last matchup the Huskies lost 60-54.
