St. Regis boys fall short

Summer Crosby

When an opponent swiped the basketball from Thomas Spencer on Friday night, the junior wasn’t about to let it out of his grasp that easily. From the floor, Spencer had his feet wrapped around the ball and put up a struggle as he lay their pulling on the ball with his feet, while his opponent tried to hang on to it. Eventually, the ball got away from him, but the freestyle move was pretty impressive.

The St. Regis Tigers faced off against Two Eagle on Thursday night and then played against the Noxon Red Devils on Friday night. On Thursday, Two Eagle jumped out with an early lead in the first quarter, but the Tigers responded to the pressure and took the lead 21 to 20 in the second quarter. However, the Tigers were down at halftime and moving into the third quarter, the ball went back and forth, but in the fourth quarter, Two Eagle came out and had three, three point shots and pulled ahead of the Tigers to win by 14 points.

“They shot from the outside real well,” Coach Dan Park said. “We rebounded real well, but defensively we weren’t where we should have been.”

On Friday, against the Noxon Red Devils, the Tigers took an early lead in the first quarter, but the Red Devils were never too far behind and at the end of the quarter had overtaken the Tigers 11 to 15. The second quarter stayed close. The Red Devils had the first points with a three point shot to make it 11 to 18. The Tigers scored a free throw shot to make it 13 to 18. With three minutes left in the second quarter, the Tigers were down by nine, 14 to 23, but the race to halftime proved successful for the Red Devils and at the end of the second quarter the score was 16 to 29.

Coming into the third quarter the first points were scored by the Tigers when James Jennings scored a three point shot from the outside. Halfway through though, despite the fact that the Tigers were scoring points, the Red Devils continued to add points to their totals and with 4:00 minutes left, the score was 21-33. With less than two minutes left, the Tigers were down by eight points and it looked like they were going to make up some ground as they continued to score and hold off the Red Devils. But the Red Devils didn’t lessen their play and at the end of the third quarter, the score was 25 to 38.

The Red Devils only continued to slip away from the Tigers. Two minutes into the final quarter the score was 28 to 45. Despite their best efforts to turn the game around, the Tigers lost 33 to 63. James Jennings led the team with 15 points on Thursday night and then again on Friday with 13 points. Thomas Spencer scored 10 points on Friday night and Park said that the junior was rebounding well and did a good job at turning the rebounds into points.

The Tigers will face off against Victor on January 14th and then play at home on January 15th against Charlo.