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Bobcats end season with pride

by Summer Crosby
| March 2, 2011 12:25 PM

Starting out this last season of basketball, Coach Bajin Smith knew that the team was coming back after a rough season last year, but things were looking good when 24 players came out for the first week of practice.

“This year, were coming back after not having a good season last year,” Smith said. “We struggled a bit and this season we’re trying to get back to the basics and build the team up. I think it’s going to take a while, but it looks real positive.”

Smith said from the get-go that he wanted to start with building a new offense and defense and it was something the team worked on throughout the season. He said it was going to be something simple that the team could grasp, but would be intense.

The team knew that they were in a tough conference and would have their work cut out for them this season. But the boys were excited to be back out on the courts playing basketball.

“We’re excited. We have great older players, but we have a lot of work to do. After the first couple of practices, we’re excited about what we might do this season,” Smith said.

The boys opened the season with games against Charlo and St. Ignatius. They lost both games, but the season was only underway and they returned to the courts to practice some more.

The following week the boys played Darby and nabbed a victory at home, their first of the season.

The Superior boys nabbed a victory last week when they played Darby at home on Tuesday.

The Bobcats jumped out to a narrow lead in the first quarter, 12-11. They took the lead in the second as well, outscoring Darby 11-6. They led 23-17 at halftime. Despite the early lead, Coach Bajin Smith said that the boys started out behind before things turned around.

“We started down about seven points, but then our defense settled down a bit,” Smith said. “(Darby’s) got some good shooters and some great athletes. They have some pretty good shooters that work from the outside, but our defense stayed with them.”

Darby threatened in the third quarter a bit, outscoring Superior 19-15, but it still wasn’t enough to take hold of the lead. Superior came out in the fourth quarter to outscore them 16-12 and took the game win by five points, 53-48.

“Our offense is starting to come around. We struggled a bit on defense, but their stepping up too,” Smith said.

A lack of shooters proved to be a problem that the Bobcats struggled with during the season. It showed in a second game against Valley Christian in the regular half of the season. The boys were only down by about four points moving into halftime before Valley started to rack up some points.

“And then they had a couple of good outside shooters that scored six points at the end of the third and sort of picked away at us,” Smith said. “We don’t have as many good shooters yet, but we’re going to be working on some shooting schemes.”

The second half continued to be hard for the team who didn’t see many wins as they continued to matchup against some tough teams.

“But that’s fine. We just have to go into each game and stay positive,” Smith said. “We are getting excited about the way the end of the season is looking.”

In the end, Smith said that he wished they could have grabbed a couple more wins during the regular season. But with the district tournament upon them, he said that they weren’t looking back. Rather they were looking at what they need to do to compete well at districts.

The Superior boys finished out their post season last week at the 6-B district tournament in Hamilton. The boys started out with a game against Deer Lodge, losing by four points, 37-41. On Friday, Superior played Valley Christian in a loser-out game and fell short, 21-37.

Overall, Smith felt that the team had a good season and “showed a lot of promise” for next year. He felt that even though they didn’t win a lot of games, they got the program headed in the right direction.

“(Even in losing) we were never down much more than single digits,” Smith said. “In a lot of the games we were tied at half. But we’re happy to get our program going in the right direction and we’ve got a lot of work to do this summer.”

Smith complimented his team saying that they had a “great work ethic” and he knows that the team will have some strong, upcoming players for next season when they drop into Class C competition.