By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
SALEM, Ore.– The Sprague Boys Basketball team were driven by their defeat to Lakeridge on December 13 at the Mountainside Holiday Classic. Their finish their wasn’t their best, and they knew they needed to do better with that.
And they did just that against Woodburn to open the Capitol City Classic Wednesday night in their 58-43. Turning to their length and physical style of play to help aid to limit the Bulldogs runs in the tournament opener.
“We just stayed out aggressive and just attacking. And it’s really huge, the other night we played Lakeridge and the ending was really horrible. We folded a little bit, but this was good adversity, and we won it,” said Braxton Long.
Bulldog Head Coach Raul Veliz spoke to the benefit of facing that style of play that Sprague presented on Wednesday. They’re going to see stuff similar to that come Mid-Willamette Conference play time here in January.
They had runs in the game in the second and third quarters, but couldn’t sustain that kind of energy that they had hoped for as they’ll play the loser of Churchill and Tualatin Friday morning at 10am at Willamette University.
“We didn’t match that physicality. We knew coming in we needed to we needed to be more physical, but we weren’t able to do that,” said Veliz. “We talked about just learning, and what did this game give us? It gave the way it’s going to be moving forward. The physicality, we need to go out there, and we need to be the one that established the physicality.”
Long led the Olympians with 17 points, Anthony Best (14) and Dukatti Witherspoon (11) scored in double-figures for Sprague. The Olympians play the winner of Tualatin-Churchill Friday at 5:30pm at Willamette University.
Fernando Del Rio and Esai Carrasquillo each led the Bulldogs with 12 points each.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
