By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Sports Editor
For the third time this season, the Sitka High Wolves fell to the Mt. Edgecumbe Braves basketball squad, Tuesday night at MEHS. But this game was far closer than the others, with Edgecumbe sometimes struggling to keep up their momentum before winning 49-40, a far cry from the Braves’ wins earlier in the season. In the January season opener, MEHS won 58-26 and repeated the performance earlier this month, beating the Wolves 68-37.
Despite the win, Braves coach Archie Young was underwhelmed by how his team played.
“The game tonight was just disappointing to me in effort. We played very, very hard against Juneau Friday and Saturday night. And we didn’t play near that hard tonight, and I was very disappointed in the effort that we put in. It’s not about wins and losses it’s about how we play and how hard we play. I was disappointed,” Young told the Sentinel after the game.
He wasn’t alone in this assessment. The home team offered a somewhat low energy performance, Edgecumbe junior Keenan Kashevarof said.
“We kind of started out a little slow. We went off but we weren’t as good as we used to be,” he said.
With the Wolves notching more points in this game than in any other of the rivals’ matches so far this season, Kashevarof stressed the need for the Braves to lock down their defense.
“We really need to work on our defense. We need to move around more and help each other communicate better,” he said.
Sitka’s offense frequently broke through the Braves’ defensive perimeter to shoot from the inside. On multiple occasions, turnovers allowed the Wolves to drive down the court and shoot before a defense could assemble.
The coach was uncertain why the team lacked focus in the home game.
“I don’t think we were very focused tonight. I think we were not ready to play and I don’t know why but we weren’t very energized. We weren’t very focused – there didn’t seem like a lot of desire to play tonight,” Young said.
This lack of energy played out on the scoreboard. The Braves held an 8-point lead at the end of the first quarter, buoyed by baskets from Mason Ivanoff, Ranen Wassillie, Jack Youngers, and Kashevarof. But Sitka narrowed the gap in the second. A run of baskets by Wolves’ sophomore Angelo Elefante and junior Clay Pearson gave the Sitka squad some overdue momentum, chipping away at Edgecumbe’s lead.
At the half, Edgecumbe led 27-22.
The third quarter settled into a minor stalemate, but the Braves clung to their lead and ended the quarter 34-29. The Edgecumbe team stretched their lead again in the final quarter.
“It’s a game of runs; fortunately for us we were able to keep our lead, stretch our lead out and maintain our lead,” coach Young said.
On the other side of the court, Sitka senior Joe Harris said the Wolves upped their work ethic, and that propelled them into a tight match against their 3A rivals.
“Definitely work ethic. Work ethic has everything to do with this. We did better on defense and offense but there are still a bunch of things we messed up on,” Harris said. He argued that the team’s struggles in the face of 4A teams have strengthened the Wolves’ squad as well.
“After we played those 4A teams (Ketchikan, Juneau-Douglas, and Thunder Mountain), it gave us a good idea where we are on the spectrum and kind of put us in our place after we understood how to play together against teams that are going to play a lot more aggressively,” Harris said.
While Sitka’s game play showed improvement since previous games in which the Edgecumbe team was a steamroller, Harris said there’s still a lot for Sitka to work on.
“On defense, effective communication,” Harris stressed. “Definitely communication, I think the louder we got on defense and on the bench in general it got us more rallied up.”
The rival teams competed in front of the largest crowd assembled in Sitka this season, with more than 100 fans attending in the cavernous B.J. McGillis gymnasium. The Braves’ pep band and cheer squad also were present. Prior to the game, Mt. Edgecumbe took a moment to celebrate Gil Truitt’s decades of service to the school and its basketball program. (See story, page 1.)
For Sitka’s Angelo Elefante, the large crowd was a motivator, as were his team’s recent losses to the cross-bridge rivals.
“We’ve lost to Edgecumbe by 30 a couple of times, so we’ve just been mad… and just a little motivation from the crowd and a little motivation from our peers, that’s what helped us work harder,” Elefante commented after the game. He led his team on the scoreboard with 9 points.
But that statistic wasn’t important to the sophomore.
“For me scoring doesn’t matter, it’s just the W that matters,” he said. He echoed Harris when he said that his team needs to work on communicating more effectively.
”We need to work on more communicating, because today it was really quiet on the court,” Elefante said.
The Wolves and the Braves play against Thunder Mountain High this week. The schedule is below.
