Mitch Calvert
It wasn’t all good news on the basketball court Friday, but it just might be the wake-up call needed on the eve of the NorWOSSA playoffs here this Friday (Feb. 20).
The juniors dropped to 6-1 in NorWOSSA play with a 44-35 upset loss to the visiting Eagles, trailing by as much as 15-7 in the first quarter before mounting a late comeback that fell short.
“Too many turnovers, not enough defence, and everybody wanted to go one at a time to the basket,” said junior coach Greg Ste. Croix. “And that doesn’t work. You’ve got to work together a little more.
“I thought we had a terrific practice [Thursday], but it wasn’t the case today,” he added. “Poor effort on both ends of the floor.”
The Muskies closed the deficit to 24-19 at the half but the slow start proved costly as Dryden consistently had a hand in the face of the black-and-gold shooters, making it difficult for Fort High to string together points.
“Dryden was very aggressive today, and whether it was the [big] crowd or the time of day, we didn’t respond to it,” Ste. Croix said, referring to the rare noon start time.
“We’ve got some work to do [before Friday], and that’s good because we don’t want to get complacent,” he warned. “Friday should be a packed house and it should be very, very loud, so we have to respond to it.
“Full marks to Dryden,” he added. “They came here and worked their butts off, and got a win for it.”
Josh Reid was red-hot for Dryden, scoring a game-high 19 points, while Cody Brown replied with 11 points for Fort High.
The Muskie seniors, meanwhile, remained undefeated with a 49-16 rout of the struggling Eagles, improving to 7-0 in league play.
“I don’t want to be overly critical of the other team, but the bottom line is they aren’t very good,” senior coach Paul Noonan said. “I felt our scoring output was a little low, but granted I wasn’t looking to run up the score or anything.
“But we should be scoring at least 60 points.”
Noonan felt some bad habits crept into their game that simply can’t be there when they play in the NorWOSSA final this Friday or potentially in an NWOSSAA showdown with a team from Thunder Bay.
“We did have 12 turnovers in the first half alone, and a few mistakes we wouldn’t have made if we were playing a little sharper,” Noonan noted. “I was trying to emphasize to the guys to concentrate on our execution and running our set offence because we could go and freelance against them [the Eagles] and do okay.
“But then you come against a tougher team and need to find other ways to score, and the guys won’t remember how to run the set offence,” he reasoned.
Jeremy Strain led the way with 15 points while Kurt Hill recorded nine.
Travis Stromness sat the game out with a sprained ankle sustained in practice, but is expected back for Friday’s NorWOSSA final.
