Despite great Husky basketball, Marist defeated the boys 67-41 at Marist on Dec. 10.
Ricky Howe was out with an ear infection as the Huskies faced the state’s top-ranked 3A team, which started players at 6’8″, 6’7″ and 6’5″.
“They’re legit,” Coach Risen said. “They’re a very talented team. They’ll definitely have all the pieces to be a final four team in the state tournament. It’s a tough place to play. Their crowds are very inspired from warmups to the final horn.”
The Huskies were mentally tough, Coach Risen said. They were only beaten in two areas, field goal percentage and the score. The Huskies shot 12-39 from the field while Marist shot 18-37.
The Huskies had more rebounds, forced more turnovers and had more steals than Marist.
“All in all, I was very proud of them after this despite the loss,” Coach Risen said.
The Huskies led 14-12 early in the game, and with 29 second left in the half, they were down by only three points. Marist put together two threes back to back to lead 32-23 at halftime. Most of the game was “tit for tat,” but Marist poured on a 19-6 run in the third.
Marist changed defenses in the third quarter shutting down Anthony Mink, who was hot in the first half. The Huskies didn’t have an answer.
“I think we took a lot of positives out of the game,” Coach Risen said.
Mink led the Huskies with 21 points. Mike Severns added eight points; Tim Matuszak, six; Seth Graves, four; and Brian Seward, one.
Kevin Harrison led Marist with 14 points. Ryan Coldren added 11. Tony Baker scored 10.
The Huskies lost 45-42 at Toledo Friday night.
“We played abysmally,” Coach Risen said. “Again we had a hostile environment, like Marist. The game was called tight, and we didn’t adapt to the environment or to the officiating. Because we didn’t adapt, we never got started. We’d put two hoops together, and we’d stub our toe again. We just didn’t play Husky basketball.’
The Huskies saw a defense they hadn’t prepared for, Coach Risen said. That left the players looking like a “deer in the headlights.”
The crowd also got to a couple of the players, Coach Risen said, and a couple of players felt like they were “suffocating” under the officiating.
“I’m blaming us for not adjusting to how they were calling the game,” Coach Risen said. On top of it, the team didn’t practice well on Wednesday and Thursday with a number of distractions including colds and flu running through the team.
“Then you couple that with our youth, and our youth compounds it,” Coach Risen said. “It was a grin-and-bear-it game as a coach.… The only thing we control is ourselves, an we have to maintain our discipline, our self-control.”
The Huskies didn’t do that at Toledo, Coach Risen said. “At Marist, everything within our control, we controlled.… It was so out of character for the kids that it was literally shocking for me.”
At Toledo, the Huskies led 11-6 at the end of the first quarter. They had slipped to a 16-14 deficit by halftime but evened the score up at 29-29 by the end of the third quarter.
Leading Husky scoring were Howe and Matuszak with nine points each. Mink added eight; Donny Cliver, seven; Tyler Emmert, four; Severns, two; Seward, two; and Brandon Miner, one.
Trevor Smith led Toledo with 19.
Junior Tyler Emmert at 6’2″ returned to the Husky lineup last week.
He will add another post presence, Coach Risen said. “He’s a great kid and great student.”
The Huskies will play in the annual Junction City tournament over the weekend. Their first game is at 8 p.m. Thursday night at Creswell.