Dogie men gain experience in opener

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter
 
Suiting only one returning starter and two limited minute role players from last year’s varsity squad meant there was a big question mark as head coach Allen Von Eye’s Dogies took the court for their inaugural contest of the 2020-21 season. 
In addition to lacking experience, Newcastle is also lacking in size and were going into last Saturday tasked with taking on two teams whose veteran players brought some challenging length to the floor.
“Pine Bluffs is a long, athletic team and though they aren’t deep, their top five are pretty solid kids,” Von Eye began. “Burns is also a big, long team and has a pretty solid 6-foot, 6-inch big man on the inside, so both teams presented us with some matchup issues.”
Concern regarding the size of the Hornets moved Von Eye to start his team in a zone defense against Pine Bluffs, however their opponent quickly saw their advantage and ran a high-low inside game which the Dogies struggled to defend. In addition, the squad found themselves out of position to bring down rebounds which allowed the Hornets several second chance opportunities in the first half.
“We worked on post defense at length last week because we knew it was going to happen, but it’s hard to work on defending bigs when we don’t have any bigs to practice on,” Von Eye sighed. “We did adjust and were able to force them into some tough shots now and again, but when you’re guarding 6 foot, 4 inches or 6-foot, 5 inches with 5 foot, 10 inches or 5 foot, 11 inches you’re at a serious disadvantage.”
Amidst their defensive challenges, Newcastle also struggled to get to the rim and finish their shots on offense, so went into the half down 16-32.
“The first half seemed to be a bunch of inexperienced guys trying to find their footing,” Von Eye analyzed. “Hindsight being 20/20, I wish I would have applied some pressure a little earlier on, because when we slapped on full- and half-court pressure, they didn’t handle it very well and they turned it over a whole pile of times.”
Unfortunately, the Dogies weren’t able to take advantage of those opportunities much in the first half. 
The second half appeared to be better and the squad was able to convert those forced turnovers into buckets, and made some runs of their own to cut the lead a little. Unfortunately, when they had to expend the amount of energy required to try to dig themselves out of the hole they were in, it was tough to come out on top.
“I thought we battled the whole game and the guys went hard and fought from start to finish,” Von Eye nodded. “I was impressed with some of the things our sophomores did, and junior Aidan Chick also played a really good game along with Zach Purviance, especially on the boards.”
The Dogies ended up in a 20-point deficit as they dropped the contest 38-58. In the loss, the squad had eight guys get on the board with pretty even distribution of scoring. Purviance, the lone returning starter, finished with nine points and 13 rebounds, while Aidan Chick also contributed nine points to his team’s total. Tate Engle, Landon Engle and Quint Perino each added four points, Avery Chick and Hayden Overman each contributed three points, and Christian Santos put in two to round out the team’s final score. 
The Dogies’ second contest of the day was just down the road in Burns where they once again faced off against a big, long team but they took the lessons learned against Pine Bluffs and applied them to the Bronc’s big inside man, performing a little better with their post defense.
“We got inside more and went right at their big to get him in foul trouble,” Von Eye declared. “Tate was really aggressive going at him despite giving up about a foot to the 6-foot, 6-inch junior who is built like a linebacker. I was proud of that, but again we just couldn’t buy a bucket.”
Once again, the Dogies started to apply some pressure on the Broncs, which resulted in turning them over, and they went on to do a nice job of getting to the glass and finishing so were able to cut Burns’ lead to five before the half. Unfortunately, Newcastle gave up an open three at the buzzer so it was a bit of a downer going into the half. However, with only an eight-point deficit, the Dogies had a lot to feel good about at the halfway point.
“One thing I have really, really enjoyed with this crew is their ownership. They understand when they are making mistakes, and they want to fix it — and I absolutely love that,” Von Eye exclaimed. “Despite getting a bit of a butt chewing in the locker room, the guys came out and owned it. If your kids are resilient, good things are going to happen, but again we just couldn’t buy buckets.”
Though lacking in length, guard play is strong for the Dogies with quick, athletic guys on the perimeter, and the end score of 30-66 certainly did not reflect their effort.
“We battled our tails off and put ourselves in the position to learn a lot of things, and realistically when you’ve got one starter and only a couple of kids with limited time coming back, there’s going to be a pretty steep learning curve,” Von Eye nodded. “But again, this crew is great at recognizing and owning their shortcomings and I have no doubt they will do everything they can to improve upon those.”
The Dogies are going into another week with some pretty tough
competition. First off, they will be challenged with taking on a strong, veteran Sundance team that will
come to town on Thursday, and will travel to Laramie to play the Plainsmen on Saturday.
“It’ll be a couple of interesting basketball games,” Von Eye mused. “It’s a good opening stretch to challenge us and give us the opportunity to grow a little bit before opening up conference play after the
Christmas break.”