GIRLS

At the Kelseyville Tournament in the semi-finals Friday, two longtime rivals met as St. Bernard’s took on Ferndale, both teams having had a relatively successful early season. The Crusaders emerged with a resonant win, 63-40, and would advance to the title game against the host school at 6 p.m. on Saturday.

Samantha Sundberg had 19 points, Carli Baum with 13, and CJ Figas contributed 11. Head coach Matt Tomlin said it was an “absolutely amazing performance by the ladies tonight. They played outstanding team basketball and everybody contributed to the victory. The last two weekends, we have finished in second place. We want to come out and attack the championship game with great energy and try to bring the trophy home.”

Reflecting on the game, Tomlin said, “We have so much respect for their two best players, Michaela Ellsmore and Tinnley Pidgeon, and it was a great team defensive performance to slow those two down, they’re great basketball players and we held them each to eight points, well below they’re average. I’m extremely happy with our defensive performance, and offensively we shared it very well, getting balanced scoring for up and down the lineup.

“I really felt like that was the championship game of the tournament, the two best teams there, and we look forward to two more matchups with Ferndale in the regular season. These are two talented basketball teams.”

Kelseyville has one especially talented player the Crusaders would have to slow down, but Tomlin opined that SB had “a lot more athletes than them” and would try to turn it into a “track meet” and play as fast as they can. “We have to be the team that attacks tonight, we’ve had teams bring it to us,” said Tomlin of the squad’s last couple tourney championship games. “Maybe we were a little bit nervous because we’re a young team, we need to attack and put the other team on their heels. But I really like the way we’re playing, and that’s what we need next week when we fly to Southern California and take part in the big Surf Cup Tournament.”

The team travels to the Surf City Holiday Classic in Huntington Beach next week.

The Hoopa boys basketball team had a rough go of it in the opening game of the Jackson Lions Club Motherlode Madness Tournament, contending with officiating behavior head coach Inker McCovery objected to and questionable play from their adversary, but won their next two games heading into Saturday’s finale. McCovey is at the helm again this year after a long and storied history coaching Warrior basketball in a previous era.

Hoopa lost to Argonaut 82-50 Wednesday before beating Denair 78-51 Thursday and Futures 62-38on  Friday in advance of a 1:30 p.m. Saturday date with Ripon Christian.

McCovey, said that after a six-and-a-half-hour drive, his squad played pretty well at the beginning of the opening game, but the referee pointed out a Hoopa fan that might give trouble and later told him his players were dirty, much to McCovey’s dismay, who thought, “He’s not supposed to talk to me like that.” He also objected to Argonaut’s consistent trash talking and lack of focus on basketball, though acknowledged that “they’re a very good team who’s playing in the championship game. They’re a hustling team; I don’t mind getting beat, but the trash talking is not acceptable in any high school sport I don’t think.”

He was happy his squad rebounded to beat Denair and Futures, the latter of which was underestimated initially.

“We just had to get our legs under us,” he said. “Malakai (McCoy) is playing very well. Brian Richards is playing pretty well, we’re just trying to rebuild the whole program and I haven’t coached for a long time.” He said he’s trying to get used to a different generation, but thought “they’d come together.”

The Warriors have only had two and half weeks of practice thus far, McCovey estimated, as they’ve been on the road so much, but he was definitely proud of their defense thus far. Ma-ninay Ferris got credit for his 23 points against Denair, McCoy tallying 28.

McCovey was especially satisfied with his squad’s performance against bigger schools from division four or three.

“The first game was definitely a learning lesson, I’ll learn from it, our kids will learn from it. I’m trying to build a really classy team, and every player is Native American, a Hoopa, Yurok, or Karuk. We may be the only Native American team in Northern California … I’ve got to understand some of these kids and their mindset, that’s a whole different philosophy in itself.”

The St. Bernard’s boys, meanwhile, were at the Kelseyville Tournament along with the girls, and came away with two wins Thursday and Friday, 69-54 against Cloverdale and 63-48 versus Middletown, respectively.

In the first game, Liam Dyer had 22 points and nine rebounds, Carson Costa 22 points and 11 boards, Luke Brunton eight points and seven rebounds, and Prince Latimer six points with five assists.

“That game was a good team win,” said head coach Pat Shanahan. “All our guys got good minutes, and we got to work on different combinations of guys on the court together that we hadn’t really been able to do much of earlier in the year. We played hard and the first and third quarters were our best. Early in the year we’re trying to get more consistent, and tried to focus on that in game two.”

Against Middletown, Dyer was “very productive,” scoring 27 with 12 rebounds, four assists and four blocks, and Garrett Shanahan had 16 points with 19 rebounds with four assists and five steals. Latimer contributed eight assists with Brunton having 11 points, four rebounds, and four steals. Costa got much credit from his coach for the defense he played on a 6’9″ opponent, which caused him to get into some early foul trouble. The Crusaders soldiered on despite having to find other ways to score on a day the outside shots weren’t falling, adjusting and attacking the paint as well as they had at any time this year, according to Shanahan.

“It was nice to see us make adjustments and the boys find other ways of putting points on the board,” said Shanahan. “I mentioned Prince’s eight assists, and as a team we had 20, which is 40-plus points off of a pass from a teammate. That’s what we’re looking for, we’re looking to move the ball, create opportunities for each other, and when we do like we did last night, those opportunities are usually pretty easy buckets and open looks. I’m very very impressed with our performance and looking forward to the championship game tonight against Kelseyville.”

Shanahan mentioned important aspects to strive for being continual movement of the ball, “not getting stagnant and getting out in transition when we can without forcing it. That’s hard to identify when you’re in the moment, so we’re just looking to continue to build on some of those themes from the previous couple games in the championship.”

The Crusaders were 7-1 on the year going into the game.