| East Carbon’s Andy Farlaino (10) drives around the Raven’s Tyson Brazell (30) in a non-league contest last Wednesday. |
Before the game between East Carbon and Waterford boys basketball game last Wednesday night, the Vikings head coach, Jeff Cisneros was contemplating what his team needed to do to get on the winning track this year.
“We play very well for a stretch and then we just let down and the other team runs us out of the gym,” he said as the crowd filed in the Viking gym for the game. “I think the problem is that sometimes we don’t think in terms of a team. It’s just something we need to start to do. One guy can’t guard four guys, everyone needs to help out.”
While that “team thinking” did improve during the game later that evening, it still didn’t get the Vikings to the Victory they wanted. The Ravens took the contest convincingly 75-38.
It began with the Vikings hitting a three point shot on their first trip down the court. That looked like a good sign, but within a minute the Ravens had gone up 4-3 and from there it went down hill. At the end of the first period Waterford led 21-10.
However, the East Carbon boys came out with a renewed energy in the second quarter and at first that showed some real promise, but then the Ravens began to press at both ends of the floor. They took the ball away from East Carbon a number of times down the floor and broke away for fast breaks. To make it worse, even though the Vikings ran down the floor to defend on those breakaways and were putting a lot of pressure on the player with the ball out in front, Waterford didn’t miss one of those layup opportunities. They lost the quarter and the half time score was 51-17.
That is the quarter that really did in the Vikings because after that they never could get going like they would have liked to.
After half time, the East Carbon kids came out and made it a real game for the half. They started to play a more organized defense and were able to protect the ball better. Waterford only scored 11 points in the third period while the Vikings put up 10.
The score was similar in the fourth quarter as the Ravens won the battle by only the slight margin of 13-11.
The Vikings did have some bright spots. Tony McFarland scored 15 and pulled down some great rebounds while Austin Preston put in 11 points. Preston hit two three pointers in the game.
One of the obvious problems East Carbon has is the small number of kids they have on the team. Between the varsity and the junior varsity teams they only have 10 players, less than most teams have just for their varsity. This means many of the players must play a JV game earlier in the evening and then play much of the varsity game too. That’s four hours of basketball in about a five hour period, while other teams usually have fairly fresh players to play most of the varsity minutes.
It was the first home game of the season for the Vikings and their last non-league contest. They have played some good teams during the early season run, which will help them when they begin league play on Jan. 10 against West Desert in Trout Creek.