McBain NMC 64, Roscommon 29Beal City 64, Roscommon 53
Houghton Lake 61, Roscommon 37
From Coach MJ Ewald:
We’ve had to run the gauntlet to start the season with a young team. The kids are battling hard, but our inexperience has shown. We’ll keep working to get better. Against NMC, we ran into a buzzsaw. They are long and can score in bunches. We struggled against their pressure and had too many turnovers.”
Joel Ewald (Sr) led the team with 15 points in the game to go along with two steals. He did an excellent job of running the point, and his D has picked up since last season. Ty Thornton (Jr) and Mason Beaver (So) gave us some solid minutes. Thornton had four points and four rebounds and hustled all over the court. Beaver also scored four points and two boards. Alex Thiel (So) and Brock Pelleran (So) worked hard inside, but they competed hard.
Ben Hamina (So) played tough defense overall. Against Beal, we did a fantastic job of adjusting to their half-court trap as the kids passed the ball well. Despite Ewald being double-teamed, Hamina and Thiel both picked up the scoring slack.
Both had career-highs in points. Hamina canned 19 points on 5/9 shooting from the 3 pt line; Thiel added 12 points and grabbed 12 rebounds. Thornton and Ewald did an excellent job of facilitating the offense and getting the ball where it needed to go.
Pelleran was outstanding as well, scoring nine points. Thornton added seven points to go with five assists. Ewald scored six points and had five assists.
We were up at halftime, 27-24, and did an excellent job of moving the ball inside out and hitting cutters along the baseline. Beal hit a flurry of threes in the third quarter, and we couldn’t get back over the hump. I’m proud of how hard the kids battled and simply played hard.
Against Houghton Lake, we simply struggled. After Ewald hit a three to cut the HL lead early to 10-8, they went on a run, and we never got our footing. Houghton Lake’s kids played hard, especially Meigs and Aguero, and took advantage of our miscues. Turnovers were again an issue, and we struggled to generate anything offensively.
Ewald had a good game, scoring 18 points to go with three rebounds. We had some great hustle minutes from Beaver and from Pelleran. Thornton tacked on seven points late.
We’ll get back at it and continue to improve.
