Staff
It was an impressive night of shooting with all the usual stars coming out to play in Fort Frances Men’s Basketball League action last Tuesday night at Fort High.
The first game of the night had the Revco Renegades battling the senior Muskies.
The black-and-gold only had four players to start out but picked up future senior Michael Vanderaa shortly after the game began, which made things more entertaining for all involved.
In the end, though, John Sivonen scored a whopping 37 points–a season-high–to lead the Renegades to a 81-69 victory.
Even-scoring and passing around of the rock led to Revco entering the break up 39-32 even though the Muskies had sunk seven “treys” in the half.
The black-and-gold fought hard to start the second half, eventually trimming the lead to 54-50 on excellent shooting by Garrett Hyatt, who finished with 21 points and was back in league play after a long absence.
Vanderaa, who shot 6-for-8 from beyond the arc, ended the night with 20 points.
But as impressive as all the shooting was from the Muskie end of the court, it paled in comparison to the show Sivonen put on at the other one.
He made three-straight “threes” to blow the game wide open and thwart the black-and-gold’s comeback attempt.
Sivonen eventually showed some mercy and chose to sit down for the last part of the game while in the middle of his hot streak.
The second game had Sunset Landscaping facing the undefeated RBC Lions.
The last time these top two teams met, it was RBC coming out ahead in a fairly even match.
This time, however, things were different as RBC was missing some key players and struggled to find any kind of support for Sam Soderman, who put up a team-high 40 points in a 94-55 loss.
Sunset exploited a weaker-than-usual RBC defence in putting up a league-best single-game point total.
Four players reached double digits in scoring for Sunset, with Josh Mastin (37) and Cody Johnson (23) leading the way while also passing the ball around well to get all of their teammates on the score sheet.
The final game of the night saw the BDO Ballerz facing Arctic Cat.
Starting with only four players and getting down early, Arctic Cat decided that rather than plod through the game, they wanted to enjoy themselves and took the forfeit.
They then brought in Justin Anderson from Sunset and while the initial impact wasn’t much, the team found its groove and things started clicking as they went into the break with a slim 26-24 lead.
The second half was just as tight, with numerous lead changes and some clutch baskets at key moments by both John Bartkowski, who finished with 12 points for Arctic Cat, and Vanderaa, who wound up with nine points off a trio of “three-pointers” for BDO.
In the end, though, Anderson’s 27 were too much for BDO, who unofficially dropped a close 54-50 decision.
RBC and Sunset now are tied for first place with 9-1 records.
Revco (5-5) sits in second while the senior Muskies and BDO (3-7) are tied for third.
Arctic Cat (1-9) remains in the basement.
Regular-season play was scheduled to wrap up last night, with the playoffs slated to begin next Tuesday (Feb. 20).
