Husky girls finish season with loss at Cascade
Sweet Home’s girls closed out their basketball season Tuesday, Feb. 24, with a 46-25 loss to No. 7 Cascade.
The Huskies made nine of their 30 shots in the game. Aaliyah Brown led Sweet Home with 13 points, and Brooke Elder scored six points on two three-pointers.
Despite the loss, Coach Erika Evans said, “This season revealed that we were capable of battling with the best of the best teams in the state. The girls were resilient through great wins, tough losses, and everything in between.”
Sweet Home finished the season with 652 points scored and 838 points allowed, the second-lowest total allowed in league. The Huskies’ final records were 8-12 overall and 2-6 in the Oregon West Conference, which finished with Stayton as the No. 1-ranked 4A team in the state, followed by Cascade at No. 7 and Philomath at No. 8.
“I do determine this season as a success. All things considered, we had double-digit wins (including games that were cancelled, but would have been wins for us), competed the best we ever have with the teams in our league, and every player grew in some way,” Evans said.
Evans said she believes the team will compete well next season with a move to the 3A Division to compete in the Mountain Valley Conference. They will play teams like No. 4 Creswell, No. 7 Pleasant Hill, Elmira, Sisters, and La Pine.
“I think we will be extremely competitive in 3A and in our new league. Our league will be pretty tough for that division, but looking at some of our 3A competition this year and where they are in the current 3A standings, I believe we will be really competitive,” Evans said.
This year’s team has only three seniors – Loralai Mark, Aubrey Newberry and Addy Vannice.
Vannice averaged the second-most steals in the league, averaging 3.5 per game over the course of the whole season.
“I think Addy has taught others how to step up on the defensive end and made them really want to have a bigger defensive role,” Evans said. “(Junior) Brooke (Elder) was stepping up all season, and (sophomore) Taylor (Gaskey) was asking to guard the primary threat on opposing teams by the end of the season as well.
“Including incoming personnel next year, I think we will have a great offensive set and will continue to dominate defensively, as we did this season.”
– Keeghan Gittins
SH boys can’t quite bounce back in Cascade loss
Sweet Home’s boys’ basketball season came to an end Tuesday, Feb, 24, in a 56-51 loss on the road at Cascade.
“Against Cascade, we just got down too big in the third and couldn’t quite come back,” Coach Drew Emmert said. The Huskies trailed by 18 in the third period before closing the gap to five in the final quarter.
“We didn’t shoot it well all night and struggled to defend multiple possessions in a row.”
The Huskies finished the season 9-14 overall and 4-6 in league play, ending as the No. 20 team in 4A marking the program’s best wins total since it last qualified for state, in 2020.
“We had a very tough group,” Emmert said. “It took us a little longer to figure out how to win close games. But once we got that confidence, we were hard to beat.”
The coach said he’d hoped his boys could make the playoffs.
“They took away the play-in games or we would have,” Emmert said. “Ultimately, we needed to win a few in the preseason that we should have, and we then (should have) won our last game.”
Bradyn McClure closed his season with a 26-point performance on the road against Cascade Tuesday, Feb. 24. He shot 11-of-18 from the field and needed just one free throw to reach his total. McClure finishes the year averaging 16.6 points on 45%, with 3 steals and 4 rebounds per game.
“Bradyn had a good year,” Emmert said. “That game was his second-highest game this year and third in his career.”
Mason Tyler averaged 11.7 points per game, and four rebounds this season.
Kellen Hartsook added an efficient nine points, 5.7 rebounds, a block and a steal in the game.
The Huskies only graduate two seniors Trenton Templin and Alex Bachand. Templin contributed much-needed rebounding and a point per game. Bachand averaged roughly 3.6 points per game.
Sweet Home’s season ends with improvement and one of its stronger records in recent years.
Despite the 9-14 record, the Huskies were only 13 total points away from being 13-10, an indication of how close several games were throughout the year.
The Huskies will move into the 3A Division next year to l play in the Mountain Valley Conference, which includes this year’s No. 5 Pleasant Hill and No. 10 Creswell.
“The move down to 3A won’t be much different,” Emmert said. “We are moving down to one of the best, if not the best, 3A league in the state. So it will be tough, but so we should be next year.
“It should be exciting.”
– Keeghan Gittins
East Linn girls’ season ends with playoff loss
The Eagles’ season came to an abrupt end Saturday night, Feb. 28, in Bandon with a 55-30 loss to the Tigers in the first round of the Division II basketball state playoffs.
“It always stings a little when basketball comes to an end, especially when you weren’t expecting it,” East Linn Coach Sierra Carrier said, noting that the Bandon game was a “tough one.”
The Eagles had lost at home in mid-December to the Tigers, who were ranked No. 6 this week. That score, though, was closer, 39-28.
“We had a very long day of traveling and that’s always hard to play off of,” Carrier said of this matchup. “Bandon was locked in and ready; they shot incredible from the three. We wish them nothing but the best for the tournament but we ended our season hungry for next year.”
East Linn came into the league season with a 5-8 record, but turned things around in Valley Coast League play, finishing the VCL season 7-3 and 14-13 going into the playoffs, including a satisfying win over Central Linn in the league playoffs after two earlier losses to the Cobras.
“The girls had an incredible season, looking back, after everything they were thrown this year,” Carrier said. “We finished second in league – after a sweet victory against Central Linn, and 11th in state.”
The Eagles came into the season after finishing 22-8 last year, having lost “the majority of their starters” due to injuries, graduation and transfers, she noted.
As a new, incoming coach, she said, she also changed the structure of the program “for my vision to really turn things upside down.”
But, she said, East Linn finished well.
“Through all of that, starting out the year, we ended on a great note and will be ready to come back next season,” Carrier said. “I tell my girls almost every day how proud I am of them and I’d say it a million times more. This year’s group was something special.
“There was a lot of questioning when it came to how the program would end up this year and I think we shocked just about everyone. I am a very happy coach with how this first year went with my Lady Eagles, but we are far from done.”
– Scott Swanson