Dan Falloon
He’s a warrior.
Justin Anderson led the Muskie senior boys’ basketball squad into battle at the St. Ignatius Invitational in Thunder Bay over the weekend, posting the team’s high score in their last three games after being shut down in the opener.
“He really wants to do well. He wants to be a team leader,” coach Kevin Gemmell lauded.
“In the first game, he was just trying to do too much,” Gemmell noted. “And then once he settled in and played his game, he went off.
“No one really could stop him.”
In his most impressive performance, Anderson lit up the Kenora Broncos for 35 points, including 21 in the fourth quarter, to pace Fort High to a 55-46 win.
The Muskies opened the tournament with a 66-60 loss to Sir Winston Churchill—a squad Gemmell considers one of the top teams in the region.
Garnet Paxson netted 15 points for the Muskies while Chris Legg and Josh Strain had 12 apiece.
The loss dropped the black-and-gold to the consolation round, where they bounced back with a 57-40 win over Nipigon-Red Rock.
Anderson poured in 19 in that one, with Strain notching 14 and Paxson adding 11.
That was followed by Anderson’s bust-out performance over Kenora to lead the Muskies into the consolation final.
Fort High mounted a challenge against St. Patrick’s but fell 59-49, with Anderson pacing the Muskies with 26 points while Strain had 14.
The news was better for Fort High last Thursday as the Muskies stopped Dryden 36-23 to improve their NorWOSSA record to a sparkling 5-0.
In the St. Ignatius tournament, Gemmell was pleased to see some more balanced scoring in the game against Churchill as three players hit double-digits, with Anderson just missing out after putting up nine.
“Most of our scoring has been coming from our guards,” noted Gemmell. “We had a little inside scoring [in the tournament].”
Gemmell pointed to Paxson, who made it into double-digits in two games, as a player who stepped up offensively for Fort High.
Just past the halfway mark of the season, Gemmell is thrilled with how the Muskies have developed to this point, looking at the season in three sections.
“Up until Christmas break, I see that as the first part of your season, and at that point, you’re just seeing what you have to work with,” he reasoned.
“After that, your second push is up to exams, and that’s where we are right now, and I’m extremely happy with the progress we made.”
Gemmell recalled the Muskies had lost 54-37 to Churchill at the start of the season, but had tightened the gap by 11 points in Thunder Bay last weekend.
“It was double-figures, so to narrow it down to two possessions, I’m extremely pleased with that, and I think the kids really know that they can play with those guys,” he enthused.
“A shot here, a shot there, we could have won.”
Gemmell said he felt the Muskies were competitive in each of their games—and could have won the consolation final if he had implemented a different strategy.
“I should have been playing our team in a man-to-man [against St. Patrick’s] so I think that was just a coaching error,” he admitted.
“If I hadn’t been so green, I think we could have went 3-1, or even 4-0, but that’s basketball.
“You lose some and you win some,” he reasoned.
The rookie head coach also has been satisfied with the attention to detail on defence his squad has developed in the first half of the season, pointing to Strain as a shining example.
“His defence on the weekend was just exceptional. He guarded their best player every game,” Gemmell raved.
“For the most part, he either frustrated them, so the best player doesn’t make the players around him better, kind of took him out of the game, or he shut him down completely so he didn’t score.”
Gemmell said the team’s defensive play has come a long way since he took the reins in the off-season.
“They’re really starting to buy into defence,” he remarked. “I thought our defence was pretty weak, we’d been getting a lot of fouls.
“It really opened our eyes to ‘Hey, we’ve got to move our feet and we’ve got to stay out of foul trouble so in those fourth quarters we can play tough, hard-nosed ‘D’.
“This weekend, the kids really bought into playing team defence and it showed in the scores,” he added.
The team suffered an injury loss in their NorWOSSA game against Dryden last Thursday when Joey Ballan broke his fibula and will be sidelined for the rest of the season.
Ballan had scored 21 points in a half in a win over Dryden earlier this season, and the black-and-gold will notice his absence.
“It’s a big loss because he really gives us a lot of scoring from the outside,” bemoaned Gemmell.
“He gives us three guards that can really shoot the ball.”
Still, the Muskies showed resilience to the injury given their effort at the St. Ignatius tournament.
“They really pulled it together,” said Gemmell. “It’s just nice to see that they don’t make excuses or anything like that.
“They play hard and they do the things they’ve got to do to win,” he stressed.
