By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
SALEM, Ore.– Following their 54-44 victory over Amity on Friday night at home, the Blanchet Catholic Boys Basketball team has put themselves into prime position to fight for the top seed in the PacWest Conference coming down the stretch.
They, Santiam Christian and Salem Academy are all currently tied for first-place in league at 10-2. The Eagles of Santiam Christian had a bye on Friday and the Crusaders held off Scio for the 57-54 victory down the road from Blanchet.
For the Cavs, it’s been since the 2017-2018 season since they’ve been this close to the top of the league standings. That year, they went 12-0 in league and got the top seed en route to a third-place finish in 3A that season. But it speaks volumes to the work they’ve done to this point to get to where they are at today.
“It’s been a great season, complete team effort from everyone on the bench. It was a great team win, super important for the league standings. Yesterday in practice, we knew that they could shoot, so that’s what we worked on was them shooting,” starts Blanchet’s James Barnett. “Defense is super important in helping us get that ‘W’.”
. An 18-0 run in the first half turned a 13-6 first quarter deficit into a 24-13 lead for Blanchet against the Warriors going into the second half. But Amity clawed back into the game, eventually getting the game back to three points. It was 40-37 Blanchet midway through the third quarter at this point.
But then, the Cavaliers clutched up big time defensively and slowly began to pull away and closing out the victory.
“I feel like we didn’t respond early enough, we didn’t adjust early enough and dug ourselves a hole. I do believe that we’re a team that can dig ourselves out of a hole, we compete really, really hard, but we let them dictate the style of play,” said Amity Head Coach Devin McShane. “They got some good basketball players, they pressure our offense and we kind of panicked tonight. But it gave us something to work on. Tonight wasn’t our night to shoot the basketball throughout the course of the game and we had way too many turnovers.”
Sam Moser led Blanchet with 18 points with Adam and James Barnett each contributing 13 points each as the Cavs will host St. Mary’s of Medford on Saturday at 1pm.
The Warriors will host Santiam Christian on Monday. Ethan Owings led Amity with 15 points and Carter Haarsma contributed another 11 points.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
