Dogie men struggle

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Editor
 
After a pretty good start to the new year in their first weekend of 2022, the Dogies took a couple of blows to the chin Friday and Saturday as they were defeated in back-to-back road games against Wheatland, 31-47, and Rapid City Christian, 36-66.
“We had a sluggish start against Wheatland and really did exactly what we knew we couldn’t do,” head coach Allen Von Eye said. “We had focused all week long on the fact that we couldn’t come out and be hesitant and let their zone dictate our offense. Unfortunately, we did both of those things.”
The Dogies battled hard in the first two quarters, despite having put up only 2 points after the first frame of play. They were able to ramp up the defense in quarter two and out-scored the Bulldogs 11-6 to go into the locker room only down 13-16.
In the third quarter, however, Wheatland blew the game wide open, draining 22 points to Newcastle’s 12.
“It was an ugly game on both sides, but you’ll have those kinds of games on the road,” Von Eye said. “We forced some difficult shots for them as well so it’s not as if they were doing exactly as they wanted to, but we just didn’t come out to play basketball in the third quarter. We just didn’t have that necessary sense of urgency.”
Though Von Eye noted that the Dogies’ defense was not exactly stellar, his team was still able to hold Wheatland
to just 47 points, and offensively the team made a run in the fourth quarter, but it was short-lived.
“It was a good learning opportunity and when I went back and watched the film, it wasn’t as bad as I had initially thought,” Von Eye analyzed. “But, the things that we struggled with were the things we’d been stressing, so that was disappointing. We were just too hesitant to get the ball to our high post and to our short corner, and you just have to do that, especially early to weaken that defense.”
Aidan Chick led the Dogies with 9 points, followed by Slade Roberson with 7. Hogan Tystad and Hayden Overman each added 5 points, Quint Perino put in 3 while Avery Chick added 2 points of his own. 
The team didn’t have long to lick their wounds as they were on the road right away on Saturday for their 12:30 tip-off against Rapid City Christian at the Donald E. Young Center on the Campus of Black Hills State University in Spearfish. 
The Comets outsized the Dogies at every position, starting no one under 6-feet tall, which caused big problems for Newcastle. 
“Christian had a lot of length which gave us issues,” Von Eye said. “They also defended us exclusively with a zone, which I didn’t anticipate. We’re pretty good against a man defense, but a zone is definitely our Achilles heel.”
Like the game the night before, Newcastle put up a much better first half than second, going into the locker room with just an 8-point deficit. However, in the final two quarters of play, the Comets out-scored the Dogies 35-13.
“I was pretty disappointed in the final score, which was a 30-point deficit,” Von Eye sighed. “When I went back and looked at the film, we had cutters all over the place, but we were just too hesitant to pull the trigger again. We also struggled to finish. We got inside, getting the shots we wanted, but we just weren’t going up strong enough to finish.”
“The floor was also bigger so in our pressure defense, our rotations were just a little bit off, but it wasn’t bad,” he continued. “What we were lacking was our aggressiveness and our decisiveness which are both things that we usually don’t struggle with too much.” 
To make matters worse, the Comets shot the ball well and did a really good job of getting the ball inside. The Dogies struggled controlling No. 2 on the bounce, and he ended the contest with 14 assists which is unheard of in high school ball.
Roberson led the team with 13 points, Overman was next with 8, Aidan Chick had 7, Perino put in 5 and Tystad rounded out the scoring for the Dogies with 3 points. 
“It gave us a really good idea of where we’re at against a zone. We are hard to defend in man-to-man, but we need to work on what we do against zone,” Von Eye determined. “We will stress that again all week because I expect to see a lot of zone on Friday against Thermopolis and again on Saturday against Buffalo.” 
While Von Eye is confident in his team’s ability to handle pressure which they will also see this weekend, the fact that the squad isn’t consistent from the perimeter means that they will definitely need to attack the zone to get inside looks. 
The Dogies will tip off in the Dome against the Bobcats of Thermopolis following the girls’ varsity contest at 5 on Friday, then on Saturday in Buffalo the game is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m.