Your future, our focus
The way coach Brian Erickson looks at things, his Northwest College men’s basketball team forgot to come back from vacation.
After a holiday break in the middle of the season, the Trappers have looked sluggish, and that’s what Erickson believes cost them in an 82-63 loss to Gillette last Saturday.
“We got caught up in their style,” Erickson said. “We stopped attacking the rim. I thought we were too passive.”
Erickson called Northwest’s iffy start to Region IX play “break hangover. We need to get back to where we were.”
The Trappers were hot prior to Christmas and still have a 12-6 record entering this week’s games at Little Big Horn in Crow Agency, Mont., and Saturday at home against Miles City Community College. The Miles City game is at 4 p.m. in Powell.
“I’m not too concerned about it,” Erickson said of what he hopes is a one-game blip against the Pronghorns. “We’ll come back.”
The Trappers’ biggest flaw was committing 26 turnovers. Few players had solid scoring nights, either. Forward Sukhjot Bains pumped in 20 points, but there were no other double-figure helpers.
Luc Lombardy and Devonte Morgan, 9 points each, and Blake Hinze, 8, followed Bains.
“They are really talented,” Erickson said of Gillette. “I thought we did some really good things and some not very good things. We had way too many turnovers and we didn’t execute on offense.”
The Trappers hit nine 3-point shots and they out-rebounded the Pronghorns, 43-34. But Northwest did not make many shots from the low post.
“We’ve got to score inside,” Erickson said.
(Lew Freedman can be reached at lew@codyenterprise.com.)