Cold start

The Patriots opened up the Calumet tournament with a loss last night, 53-29 to the Heritage Defenders, sort of the host school. By sort of, I mean it was played at Heritage but the tournament is hosted by Calumet. Heritage is tough enough, but a combination of extremely cold shooting by the Patriots, tough defense by Heritage, Jacob Zylstra, and home court advantage made them seemingly invincible in the contest.

At first it looked like both defenses would dominate, as mid-way through the quarter it was 4-2, Heritage. Seth pulled HSRC to within on when he split two free throws, but Heritage scored six straight before Kyle scored. Heritage split two of their own free throws before the quarter ended to give them a six-point lead going into the second. After Josh scored inside, Heritage scored a couple of basket. Josh split two free throws, then following a Heritage three, scored inside again. Heritage hit another three before halftime to make it 21-10 game entering the break. At this point HSRC had hit only four of thirty from the field - 13.3%.

It looked like things might turn around in the second half as Seth hit his first shot, a three, to open the scoring. Heritage, however, answered with their own three. Set scored again, but Heritage continued to squash whatever hope we had, this time by answering with a three, then another, then the consecutive baskets to open a 21-point lead. HSRC managed to get back to withing seventeen before quarter end. The guys really couldn't anything going, never getting closer than fifteen in the quarter. Heritage made a fluury of threes, while all we could manage after Seth brought us to withing fifteen was two free throws by Lucas and basket by Nate. I will have the stats when I summarize the tournament in a later post.