Hoops teams sweep Eagles

The Muskie junior and senior boys’ basketball teams took divergent paths but arrived at the same destination in beating the Dryden Eagles yesterday at Fort High.
The juniors took to the court first and dominated all facets of the game en route to a 49-22 victory.
“Overall, I was quite happy with the way we played,” Muskie head coach Gord McCabe remarked. “I thought we really started to move the ball well and we were really cutting to the hoop nicely.
“Other than one stretch for about three minutes at the end of the first half, I was pretty happy with the effort and the execution of everybody,” he added.
The hosts jumped all over Dryden early—paced by Chris Legg’s seven first-quarter points—and held a 15-1 lead going into the second frame.
Dryden recovered from the early Muskie onslaught and made a game of it, cutting the deficit to 21-13 at the half.
But that would be as close as the Eagles would get as the Muskies (2-1) dominated the second half, outscoring Dryden 28-9 to seal the victory.
Legg was the game’s high scorer with 10 points while Kyle Hill added eight.
The Muskie senior team then stepped onto the court looking to continue its streak of blowout wins in NorWOSSA play.
But plagued by a plethora of early turnovers, the black-and-gold struggled to score and stumbled to a 35-27 victory.
“I think we had something like 15 turnovers in the first half and we only had 14 points,” head coach Paul Noonan said. “When you turn the ball over that often, you’re not going to score.
“I think we’ll shake it off,” he added. “We did come out with a win and we have to take that as a positive.”
The early turnovers meant the Muskies (3-0) held a razor-thin 16-15 lead at the half.
But after a brief talk and some adjustments, the black-and-gold took control of the game—outscoring the Eagles 19-12 in the second half en route to the win.
Morgan Anderson paced the Muskies with 14 points.
Both teams resume NorWOSSA play next Tuesday (Dec. 19) when they travel to Kenora to face the Broncos.
The junior squad also will be seeing action this weekend when they host three exhibition games at Fort High. The team faced Kenora this afternoon before squaring off against the Eagles at 8 p.m.
They’ll wrap up their exhibition trilogy tomorrow at 11 a.m. against the Churchill Trojans (Thunder Bay).