Staff
While the weather was a lot nicer last week, the turnout still was a bit low in Fort Frances Men’s Basketball League action last Tuesday night at Fort High.
Thankfully, the games were good and those who came out enjoyed some exercise and intense hoops action.
The first game of the night saw the Muskies squaring off against the Revco Renegades.
This was an intense game that was close throughout, including multiple lead changes late in the second half.
Revco, playing with no subs, fought hard and held a 24-19 lead at halftime.
But the Muskies (4-6), who had ended the first half on a good run, kept pouring it on in the second half and were led by Kobi Ward–who scored 14 of his 20 points in the closing 20 minutes.
Seeing their lead diminish and then vanish, the Renegades (4-6) refused to let themselves be defeated for a second time by a Muskie team fielding only four players.
Payne Hunter heated up and hit three triples in the half while his team-high 16 points led Revco to comeback 57-51 victory.
All nine players on the court for the game netted at least seven points so no one needed to go home feeling like they didn’t contribute.
The second game saw the RBC Lions looking to rebound from their first loss of the season as they took on Sunset Landscaping.
This was a game that looked lopsided from the start as Sunset had a team of nine show up while the Lions only fielded five players and were missing most of their top scorers.
Corey Smith carried RBC (8-2) on his back for most of the night, running down the court and playing tenacious defence while putting up a team-high 16 points on offence.
But his efforts proved to be too little against another prolific night for Sunset’s leading scorer Josh Mastin (26 points) and the rest of his team as they cruised to 56-31 victory.
There was some excellent passing on the inside for Sunset (4-5-1) as Mike Belluz had a number of assists while Devon George had some nice buckets to end the night with 10 points.
His brother, Liam, meanwhile, found his range from beyond-the-arc for the Lions and netted 11 points, including three triples.
The final game of the night had Arctic Cat taking on the BDO Ballerz.
The game started off as a guaranteed win for BDO (4-5-1) as Arctic Cat (5-5) had to forfeit due to only having three players to start the game.
But that didn’t stop both teams from playing a very entertaining brand of basketball for 40 minutes.
Arctic Cat actually held the lead for most of the game, but the Ballerz fought hard on offence and had all seven of their players on the scoresheet before the night was complete.
The Ballerz were creative with a 1-3-1 defence that helped them get level with Arctic Cat at one point, but just ran out of gas at the end and were unable to contain Justin Anderson (24 points) and Jeremy Strain (18)–who is in town for a few weeks and was thankful for the chance to play.
Jordan Lavallee led BDO with 11 points while Toby Munro showed off his three-point shot on his way to a successful 10-point performance.
The Muskies have a NorWOSSA league game today in Dryden, so they will shift to playing the final game of the night for this week’s men’s league games against the Lions at 8:30 p.m.
Sunset will battle Arctic Cat in the early game at 6:40 p.m. while the Renegades will take on the Ballerz at 7:30.
