The St. Louis Boys Varsity basketball team had a busy week; Tuesday, Jan. 16, the Sharks hosted Carrollton at SLHS and had a heartbreaking defeat by a final score of 38-55. Then, Friday, Jan. 19, the Sharks hosted Ithaca for another home game in a battle for the bell, and lost again 26-56. The boys basketball team now stands at a record of 2-9.
As far as Carrolton, the Sharks were putting in work on the offensive side of the court, but there seemed to be some chinks in their armor, mostly on defense. Senior Josh Dew expanded on why that was and stated, “Going into the game, we knew that we would have to fight for defensive rebounds and prevent them from getting important offensive boards, but we just weren’t able to capitalize on those when we really needed it.” Dew explained that there was a difficulty to get the team under the basket and fight for solid positioning to get rebounds, but then shifted to where he personally had trouble. “(For) me, I got into foul trouble kind of early because I was just hacking at the ball.”
Coming out for the second half, the team was reinvigorated. Dew elaborated on that shift with, “We scouted a lot of their plays, so we knew what we were going to see and when we were going to see them, but Carrollton was just able to slowly build momentum and get further ahead of us as the game progressed. It was a winnable game, but we fell short defensively and had a hard time doing the small things”.
Then against Ithaca, the Sharks unfortunately fell short in their home territory, Sophomore Xander Brock shared his thoughts on the game with, “It was a winnable game, but we kept having issues communicating on defense.” Brock then shared how it’s frustrating to him and the team that all their work on communication in practice seems to disappear when they step out on the court. Brock then pivoted to discuss some of the positive things that stood out to him against Ithaca by stating, “Udter Tweh had some good rebounds when he was out there, and that showed us that we need to play under the basket more for offense and defense.”
You can see the Shark’s boys basketball team play against Nouvel Catholic Central in Saginaw, at Nouvel Catholic Central, Friday Jan. 26.
