Dogie hoopsters tip off season

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Editor
 
It wasn’t what they had been planning, but the Dogies were grateful to be able to get on the court after a winter storm thwarted plans to travel to Burns for their Winter Classic Invitational Tournament. 
“It wasn’t exactly what we had in mind for our first weekend,” admitted head coach Allen Von Eye. “We were worried for a while that if we didn’t get to go somewhere that we’d lose three games, because it’s tough for schools to fit in another team at the last minute.”
Fortunately Wright had a couple of teams cancel for their tournament, so contacted Von Eye to ask if he could bring his team to fill one of those open slots. 
Weather wasn’t any better on Saturday, but the team made it to their destination and was able to get in two basketball games against teams who gave the Dogies some good competition for their season openers. Both Greybull and Wright are 2A teams who bring to the court some experience and some shooting ability, and Newcastle struggled offensively, so unfortunately the Dogies were unable to come out of the day with a win.
Greybull was up first for the Dogies, and started the contest hitting three contested 3-pointers to quickly go up 9-2 over Newcastle.
“We knew they would be a pretty good shooting team, and we knew they wouldn’t be all that deep,” Von Eye began. “But then a couple of guys who came off the bench pretty much played better than anyone else and shot the heck out of the ball.”
It was a great game to start off with for the Dogies to work on their new defensive sets and, according to Von Eye, his team executed pretty well until reversals put them a little off and they gave up too many baseline drives without sliding out of the paint and helping.
“We gave up some buckets with that, and then we also gave them too many uncontested 3-point attempts,” he said. “But we did battle back and played pretty solid after being down 7 at the half.”
Unfortunately, though the Dogies dominated the boards against the Buffalos, they struggled to put the ball through the hoop. 
“It was the story for us in both of our ball games,” Von Eye said. “We couldn’t hit our open looks, which were a lot of layups and inside shots. We did what we wanted to as far as getting paint touches, but we just couldn’t buy a bucket.”
Newcastle outshot both of their opponents on the day, however the percentages were not in the Dogies’ favor. 
In the third quarter, Newcastle settled down and went to work, outscoring the Buffs 14-7 to tie things up at 30 heading into the fourth, then the teams went blow for blow in the final eight minutes.
With just around one minute to play, the Dogies took a 1-point lead, so Von Eye changed defense with the intention of playing soft and staying in front of their man. 
“We made some bad decisions coming down the stretch,” Von Eye said. “We had a guy gamble and they missed so had a blow-by which turned into a three-on-two situation and they got a layup to take the lead.”
So then the Dogies were down one with short time to play. Unfortunately, they were unable to capitalize on their possession, had to foul and the Buff made both free throws, so were left with needing a three-point shot to tie it for a chance at overtime. 
“It’s so much easier to play defense with a lead than offense down 1,” Von Eye mused. “You just tense up and force things which makes it tough.”
The Dogies ended up dropping the contest 41-44 with Aidan Chick coming out as the team’s leading scorer with 16 points. Slade Roberson returned to the court after a year and a half and put up a double-double with 10 points and 10 rebounds, and next for the Dogies was Tate Engle with 7 points. Hayden Overman contributed 4 points while Avery Chick and Braden Jenkins each added 2 points to the score.
“It was a great learning opportunity for us, but it was really important that we did indeed learn from it,” Von Eye stressed. “We need to look at why we lost as a whole, and what we need to do to improve so those things don’t happen again.”
A veteran Wright team awaited Newcastle after a quick breather.
“We knew they’d be rocking and would be excited to be taking on a 3A team on their home floor,” Von Eye began. “They were also much more rested than we were. We had about an hour break in between games while they had several hours, plus they go a lot deeper on their bench than we do, so our guys were definitely at a disadvantage there.”
Never one to make excuses, Von Eye simply put it on his players to dig deep, challenge themselves, and play, however fatigue started to show in the second half. Wright had a 32-25 advantage over Newcastle going into the half, and then outscored the Dogies 19-10 in the third quarter.
Newcastle got a second wind and ramped things up to outscore the Panthers 16-10 in the fourth, but it wasn’t enough so dropped their second contest of the day 51-61.
“I was impressed with Wright,” Von Eye admitted. “They were much more disciplined than I thought they’d be, but really I thought we played pretty well for the most part again.”
“We had a chance to collapse and roll over when we got down by 15, but we didn’t and I was pretty proud of the kids for that,” he continued. “We had to put in some pressure defense on the fly because we really haven’t worked on that yet this season, and the guys stepped up and executed that pretty well.”
Roberson put up his second double-double of the day and the season finishing with 23 points and 13 rebounds. Engle and Aidan Chick were next with 9 and 8 points, respectively, while Hogan Tystad added 5, Overman 4 and Avery Chick 2 to round out the scoring. 
Newcastle took care of the ball better than they have in the past, and rebounded pretty well in the two contests. The first games of the season are usually pretty ugly, but the Dogies only turned the ball over 20 times against Greybull and 16 times against Wright, and out-rebounded Greybull, 34-23. But the name of the game is that you have to get buckets. Shooting percentage was nowhere near where Von Eye and his crew wanted it to be, so that is something the team will be working on to improve. 
“There were some definite bright things from the day,” Von Eye said. “We got to see some great things from the guys, but there are things that we now see we need to work on.”
This week, the Dogies have three more opportunities to clean things up before Christmas break against more pretty decent competition in the annual Stateline Shootout. They will start things off hosting the Bulldogs from Sundance in their home opener on Thursday at 7 p.m. On Friday, they will tip off against Belle Fourche at 3 p.m. in Lead, then will return to Lead on Saturday to take on the Golddiggers at 4:30.