Your future, our focus
Shooting nearly 57 percent from the floor will usually do the trick.
And hitting Eastern Wyoming with outside shots while the visitors protected the interior helped the Northwest College men’s basketball team to a runaway 88-63 victory last Saturday.
“Not bad at all,” said coach Jay Collins of the shooting accuracy. “I think it was a really good game for us.”
Guard Kyle Brown fired in 25 points, bouncing back from a game where he had so many aches he felt like a pin cushion, guard Rambo Badyyal came off the bench to collect 15, forward Max Dehon had 13, and guard Josh Petteno added 10.
The diverse scoring pleased Collins one game after the Trappers were stymied by a Laramie Community College squad that creatively sealed off that type of shooting in a 70-68 loss.
Northwest’s split left its record reading 9-9.
“The game plan was to just stay on me,” Brown said of how he was limited to an uncharacteristic four points.
Collins said Laramie “uglied it up. They took us out of our game. It was good coaching.”
Forwards Jerome Mabry (16 points) and Dehon (12) made critical plays defensively and rebounding, but when it seemed Mabry’s hands-on-everything hustle was going to turn the game he got into foul trouble and had to go to the bench.
“Having him in foul trouble tonight really hurt,” Collins said. “He was just being a tough dude.”
Yet Northwest had a chance at the end, in large part due to Jahquel Goss coming off the bench to score 13 points.
“We stayed poised,” Goss said.
He had a shot to tie it, but it didn’t fall.
“That would have been story book,” Goss said.
The Lady Trappers were also 9-9 after dropping a 77-73 decision to Laramie and then losing big to Eastern Wyoming, 99-63.
Despite Adela Smutna’s 25 points and Riley Aiono’s 11, poor shooting doomed Northwest against Eastern. The Trappers shot 30.2 percent.
The Laramie game was a showcase for foul shooting.
“It’s hard to get on a run,” said coach Cam Levett. “It’s a buzz kill.”
The visitors made 35 out of 44 attempts in the whistlerama and the Trappers 22 of 27. Momentum was almost non-existent.
“They made so many free throws,” said Trapper guard Raquel Turner.
Smutna, 18, Samiyah Worrell, 17, and Tess Henry, 13, led Northwest scorers. At 76-73, Smutna took a 3-point attempt from the corner for a potential tie, but it missed.
“It’s a hard loss. There’s gonna be games like that,” Henry said. “There’s gonna be games we could have won. We have to focus on the little things so we could have got one more rebound, one more shot.”