By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Sports Editor
With a sizable crowd cheering in the stands and intense gameplay on the court, the regional basketball tournament kicked off with a bang Wednesday at the B.J. McGillis gym.
Sitka High’s Maitlin Young drives on the hoop against the Houston Lady Hawks, Wednesday at MEHS. Sitka won by a wide margin. (Sentinel photo)
The Mt. Edgecumbe Lady Braves opened the tournament with a narrow loss against Redington High, 38-33. Edgecumbe led 15-13 at the half and clung to a scant lead until the final minute of the game. With only 30 seconds left on the clock, a three-pointer by Lady Huskies Lexi Seymore put Edgecumbe on the back foot and sealed the game.
Looking back on her team’s solid performance in the first half, MEHS sophomore Tessa Anderson said her team entered the game with plenty of energy.
“We were hustling a lot and we were doing a pretty good job fighting for rebounds, which helps a lot. And our energy was up… We’re working on communicating more, and we have been. And we’ve been playing up, we’ve been playing better teams,” Anderson said.
The Lady Braves’ defenses successfully stymied the Lady Huskies for much of the game, but there was little the home team could do in the second half against Seymore’s shooting. Redington’s star netted 25 of her team’s 38 points.
Edgecumbe junior Kathy Jones stressed the importance of guarding such a capable player.
“Just have really good communication and switching, know where she’s at at all times,” Jones said.
But she also highlighted her team’s defensive abilities.
“Our defense was over our offense. We do a little better on defense… We’ve been practicing our rebounds and working on defense, switching, hand offs,” she said.
Though the Lady Braves clung to their narrow lead for much of the game, Anderson said her squad struggled to remain mentally in the match.
“For me at least and I think for a lot of the team, we’re trying to make ourselves not give up. It’s hard to fight for that mentality, but we’re getting better at it… We try to pick each other up,” the sophomore said.
In their game today, Anderson hopes “to win and to work together.”
Like her athletes, MEHS coach Kathy Forrester complimented the team’s defense, but added it’s hard to win without scoring baskets.
“Maybe our emotions get the best of us sometimes and the frustrations that we might have either with ourselves or each other. And you can’t win ball games with that, you have to be able to put that stuff aside… Every time we’ve won I feel we’ve won because of our defense, but you also have to be able to score too… It doesn’t matter how well you play defense sometimes, you still have to be able to put the ball in the hoop to win, especially when you have someone like Lexi scoring at will,” Forrester said after the loss.
Looking forward to today’s game, the coach thinks her players will again put up a solid defense.
“I expect them to play the same great defense that they played today and work hard,” she said.
The Lady Braves face Houston High today in the double elimination bracket. Houston fell to the Sitka High Lady Wolves 66-29 Wednesday night. The loser of tonight’s Edgecumbe-Houston game will be done for the season.
This week’s tournament is the first of the new Eastern Conference. In contrast to recent years in which Sitka and Edgecumbe competed on their own, Forrester was glad for the diversified competition.
“This is great, it’s almost like it used to be. I love having more teams to play beside just Sitka,” she said.
On the boys side, the Sitka Wolves fell 69-24 against the top-ranked 3A boys team in Alaska: the Houston Hawks.
From the outset, the Wolves struggled to hold the line defensively and by the end of the first quarter, Houston already led 23-6. At the half, the away team had stretched their lead to 47-15.
Wolves freshman Tray Demmert said that in such a challenging game he tries to approach each point as a fresh match.
“It’s really just treating it like it’s 0-0, like it’s the beginning of the game, like nothing has happened, like there’s a new team you’ve never seen play… You’ve just got to go at it,” Demmert told the Sentinel after the game.
Sitka junior Dylan Crenna knew before the game started that it was going to be tough.
“We’ve got to compete, we know they’re a tough team. We’ve played them before, so just go out there and try our best and see what happens… We just try to be positive. We know we’re down, but we just try to pick our teammates up and get back into the game and play our hearts out,” he said.
A team like Houston, he said, plays intelligently.
“They’re very smart offensively and defensively they anticipate everything. They’re just a well-rounded team, a lot of talent individually. They put in the work to get the way they are,” Crenna said.
Houston’s talent also struck SHS coach Jarrett Hirai.
“You just hope that you’ve prepared them to know, to give them the best scouting report to be ready to play. We’ve played them four times, we know exactly what they’re going to do, we know who’s going to do it,” Hirai said. “We just hope that a couple things go our way, they don’t shoot as well as they do. We’ve got to make sure we try to prevent the opportunities they like getting, fast breaks, open shots. They’re a really, really tough team.”
In hindsight, Hirai hoped for more aggression from his team.
“We just didn’t execute defensively the way I thought we would. We only had one foul in the first half, so it was obvious that we were kind of on our heels and we weren’t being aggressive enough,” the coach said.
But he did see “little glimpses of being aggressive on the offensive end. They’re always supportive of each other. That’s one thing that’s nice about this group, but we’ve got to collectively come together and try to play the best basketball that we can.”
Demmert said he focuses on aspects of gameplay within his control.
“I can really only control how I play, so it was really just thinking about all the experiences I’ve had, at least this year,” the freshman said, “and trying to make sure I don’t make the same mistakes at the beginning of the season.”
Anticipating today’s game, Demmert said his team can compete, but needs to ensure that their confidence level is moderated.
“Both of those teams (Mt. Edgecumbe and Redington), I know we can compete with, I know we can beat,” Demmert said. “And so it’s just a matter of if we play it like they’re a new team like we’ve never played them and just go up there with confidence, not too much, just work hard. I’m just a little worried about the team coming out with too much confidence.”
In the final game of the evening, the Mt. Edgecumbe Braves scored a nail-biter 70-68 win over the Redington Huskies. Today, Sitka’s boys play Redington, and Edgecumbe will face Houston.
Crenna was determined not to let his team’s season end with tonight’s game.
“We get another chance at state if we win, but if we lose we’re over, we’re done for the season. And I don’t want that. I want to keep going and I’ll fight until the end, I really want to win tomorrow,” Crenna said.
