Joey Payeur
The Muskie senior boys’ basketball team saw its river of offence reduced to a trickle when they couldn’t throw the ball into the ocean while standing on the edge of the championship beach.
A 44-20 loss to the Churchill Bulldogs (Thunder Bay) left Fort High with a silver medal at the Kenora Invitational Tournament over the weekend.
“It was a rough shooting game, maybe our worst of the season, which really hurt because they played an aggressive style of defence,” noted Muskie co-coach Bryce Coyle.
“So when we worked the ball and got a good open look, we couldn’t capitalize and we got down big early,” he said.
The Muskies got 12 points from Aaron Bujold but only eight from the rest of his team.
“When we managed to get the game back to an eight-point deficit in the third quarter, we seemed to run out of gas,” Coyle added.
“We weren’t getting to loose balls, closing out as well on shooters, or managing to secure rebounds like we were earlier in the day, which allowed them [Churchill] to open up their lead again.
“The guys played really well on defence again, but it seemed like we expended so much energy on that side of the ball that we had nothing left for the offensive end,” he reasoned.
Fort High certainly was in scoring mode during its first two games of the tourney.
Liam Metke and Kobi Ward each had 10 points as the Muskies routed the Red Lake Rams 51-20 in the quarter-finals.
“We had a sluggish first half, but the boys came out with more intensity in the third quarter where we scored 26 points,” noted Coyle.
“Defensively, we played a decent game and we did a good job limiting them [Red Lake] to one shot per possession.”
The Muskies received a much stronger push from the Portage Collegiate Institute Trojans (Portage la Prairie, Man.) but made a series of defensive stands late to hang on for a 55-53 semi-final triumph.
“This was a fun game that was close the entire way,” said Coyle, who watched Ward lead the team with 20 points while Bujold netted 18.
“We shot the ball pretty well early, forcing them out of their zone defence,” he noted.
“We didn’t do a great job with our transition defence,” Coyle admitted.
“But our half-court defence was strong again this game and allowed us to grind out some key stops down the stretch, which helped us secure this win.”
The Muskies squared off against the Kenora Broncos here yesterday, with the score unavailable at press time.
The squad then heads to Dryden tomorrow to face the Eagles in a game that likely will determine first place and who gets a bye to the NorWOSSA final here Feb. 17.
The Muskies close out the regular season Monday on the road against the Broncos.
