Sayre High School Head Coach Nick Fowler gave quotes related to his team’s performances in last week’s Mooreland Holiday Classic.
Fowler said, “Mooreland tourney Day 1 — We played Canute on day 1 of the Mooreland Holiday Classic. After coming off of a 20 point loss to them on Tuesday the boys were confident that they still had a chance to beat them since it seemed like it was a few plays here and there that caused the lead to balloon on them Thursday. The major difference on Thursday was that we shot too many 3 pointers without making them. On Tuesday it was a decent game for most of the match because we got down hill and shot layups and jumpers. The biggest bright spot on the game was that Tynan Gillespie finally found his legs offensively and lead our team in scoring with 13 pts.
Following our Day 1 50 point loss our kids had to dust themselves off and go at it again with the tournament host team Mooreland. This was a very good game that was plagued with bad 3 point shot selection. The game plan was base on three things, contain their guard play, find a way to get their 6’8” big man in foul trouble early, and attack the paint. While we did a very good job executing parts 1 and 2 of the game plan, part 3 we veered away from. We ended up shooting 2-14 from the 3 point line in the 1st quarter alone, but we adjusted in the second half and shot only five 3 pointers and roughly 25 shots in the paint. Our too scorer on day 2 was Freshman Tate Bawden. He was able to give us 17 points, all of which came from scoring in the paint and hitting free throws when fouled.
On Day 3 we were finally able to get over the hump and get win number 1 on the year! Everyone played much better on the last day of the tournament. I was really proud of how the boys bounced back after taking two tough losses, 1 of which we felt was a win we let slip through our fingers by simply not executing every phase of the gameplan. We passed the ball well, executed our full court press, and more than anything we attacked the paint. This was a full team effort where everyone got in the scorebook even if it was only 1 or two points by some. We were lead in points by Colten Viduarri (19) and Tate Bawden (10). We had a shaky 3rd quarter that allowed them to take the lead back, but around the 2:30 mark in the court we were able to take the lead back and the seal the game away with 4 straight fastbreak buckets.”
