By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
SALEM, Ore.– For a half, the Blanchet Catholic Boys Basketball team were going neck-and-neck with 1A powerhouse Crane of the Burns-area Thursday night.
The Cavaliers were down 20-17 after 1, 36-30 at the halftime break to the three-time defending Champions.
They wanted to spread out the floor and try to take Cody Siegner, a Oregon State-commit for football, out the best that they could get their plays close to the basket. Something that worked well in the opening half for Blanchet.
“They’re a really good team and they kind of bogged us down in the second half and as far as defense, we wanted to zone press so they can make some mistakes and they did,” said Blanchet Head Coach Hans Rasmussen.”We’re missing two of our starterd and a bunch of our bench players had to come in and play some minutes that they’re not used to. But what they showed was that their heart is bringing us up.
“If they can take that heart, hussle and play to the rest of the season with our starters coming back in a week or two, we’ll do really well.”
In the second half, fatigue began to sink in for Blanchet coming off of their strong opening 16 minutes, and the Mustangs took advantage of it. The senior-led Crane squad settled down and went back to their fundamentals as they turned the six-point lead that they had entering the third quarter and turned it into what would be a 67-42 victory to advance in the tournament.
“That’s a very skilled and senior-led team with a really good coach, so we give them all the respect,” said Rasmussen. “But we can take what we did in that first half and I think we can use it against East Linn tomorrow and whoever we play on Saturday. We’re just trying to get better at the fundamentals of basketball and continue to build the program at Blanchet up and that’s how we’re doing it.”
Blanchet will look to bounce back Friday against East Linn Christian. Bill Riecke led the Cavs with 15 points. Adam Barnett scored another 12 for Blanchet.
Siegner finished with 17 points with Joah Friedrichsen leading Crane with 22 points
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
