Both teams are at Marist on Friday

The Cottage Grove High School boys and girls’ basketball teams were in similar positions to begin league play a few weeks ago, but things have changed dramatically after six games. The girls have gone undefeated after the first round of action and were scheduled to play second-place Junction City last night. The boys had the best record (9-2) in non-league play, but after going through the Sky-Em gauntlet, the Lions ended the first half at (1-5).

Every game is now critical for the boys’ varsity to have any hopes of postseason play. The girls, on the other hand, who continue to be the No. 1 rated team in the state 4A, have earned the luxury of a two-game lead over Junction City and Marist. Both teams will take on Marist in Eugene Friday night.

The boys lost a heartbreaker in overtime the first time and will need to pull off the upset to keep their hopes alive. The girls do not need to win in terms of the league standings (unless they were upset by Junction City last night), but want to stay sharp and close out the Sky-Em season undefeated.

The Lion girls’ coach Kerry Clawson summed up last week’s win over Sisters as well as the outlook for the team for the rest of league play.

“It went great, fantastic,” Clawson said regarding the Lions’ win in Central Oregon against the Outlaws. “Sisters plays good defense and they ran a couple of half court trapping sets, but I didn’t even need to call time out. The kids responded immediately with some things we’ve done in the past and we absolutely had no problem.

We completely shut down their offense. We did press, but they were really good with the press. They threw over the top and we had trouble getting back a couple of times and that was in the first quarter.

In the second quarter they scored one field goal, and one in the third and one in the fourth. They were stuck.

Before the game I talked to the kids about how Sisters plays good “D” and we don’t want to go to Sisters and drop an egg and Jordan Brunetti says, ‘yeah, but we play good defense too.’ And I said, ‘well, let’s hope so. And they did. So, I’m very pleased with our play. We just played tough.

I played all 12 kids. It’s hard to get all 12 in 32 minutes and we didn’t lose anything. Those kids that came in, we just kept right on a rollin’. So, that was really nice.

We’re healthy for the second half. Jensyn Short (who missed one game) came back and responded with three three-pointers…boom, boom, boom. Reed Levings and Short were beating the half-court press and then feeding to our baseline corners. We’re looking good.

We’re adding some new things. We’re just adding a zone offense with the same philosophy we run in our man and our other zone. It gives us a lot more options. The one problem I see with it is the zone we currently run, kids are pretty confident about shooting spots…when I move here, I’m going to get the ball here. In this set there is way more opportunity, but it’s not like a defined thing. So, kids have to be aggressive and shoot the ball because they could potentially get it in any of the defined positions we have on the floor, which is six spots inside and six spots outside. That much freedom sometimes stymies a team, so we’ve discussed that and we’re working on that.

I doubt that Marist at their house is going to look like Marist at our house. It’s exciting. La Pine watched our game with Sisters. I hope they got an eye full, because I don’t know what I would do if I had to play that team…if I had to play us.We’re looking good. Let’s hope that we can continue.

I don’t think anybody is overconfident. We talk about that every game. We talk every time that preparation needs to look the same.

I think what happens with good teams at this point in

the year that you have to be careful with is kids start thinking, ‘or we’re doing so good I want to get mine.’ There’s envy and jealousy sometimes and all sorts of things. We just need to be careful of those bad habits. The comments I hear from people is that we pass the ball so well and that kind of team play is what has got us to where we’re at right now. We need to continue that.”



For the complete article see the 02-03-2010 issue.

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