NHS hoopsters battle, but come up short

It was another tough weekend of competition for the Newcastle High School hoopsters as they competed in Sundance against the Bulldogs, the Lead Gold Diggers and the Belle Fourche Broncs Dec. 19–21 at the annual Stateline Shootout Tournament. Though head coach Allen Von Eye’s crew dropped all three contests, the Dogies battled hard and forced Belle Fourche into overtime on Saturday.

Final scores for each game were 47-67 against Sundance, 49-70 against Lead, and 48-62 in OT against Belle Fourche.

“This has been a great pre-Christmas run,” Von Eye said. “I knew we were going to get tested a lot, and you could easily schedule tournaments where you get “cake games” and inflate your record going into your conference season, but I think you do a disservice to your team and to your kids.”

Indeed, in their second tournament of the year, it was another really tough weekend where the Dogies ran into some quality basketball teams, beginning with the Bulldogs on Thursday.

Unfortunately, Von Eye’s crew came out flat to start the contest and Sundance used the opportunity to jump on Newcastle quickly.

Point guard Teddy Troftgruben got into foul trouble so spent much of the game on the bench, however, his brother Thatcher put the team on his shoulders and filled up the stat line, scoring a career high 31 points and also contributed in rebounding, assists, steals and deflections.

“Thatcher was tough, and was pretty much unguardable through the whole game so that was huge,” Von Eye said. “We also were able to get some of our pups into the game, and got some really good experience, too.”

After the slow start, the Dogies battled hard and cut their deficit from 25 down to 13, but it’s difficult to dig out of a hole that is created early.

Rebounding is appearing to be an Achilles heel for the Dogies, which didn’t help in their efforts in this contest either, however, Von Eye noted that the good to be taken from the game is that it gave him and his crew some ideas of what they need to improve upon going forward.

On Friday, Newcastle was up against Lead, which rosters a veteran team with several players who have been battling on the varsity court for the last two or three years. As such, they put together a tough opponent for the Dogies.

It was another slow start defensively for Von Eye’s crew, but offensively the Dogies did a much better job finishing the contest with three players in double figures, including Thatcher, Teddy and Kyan Allen (who posted his first double-double of the year). The Dogies also got contributions from five other players throughout.

“Colten (Hatheway) came off the bench and got two big threes for us which was great,” Von Eye said. “We just didn’t play the best defense and our rebounding wasn’t that good either again.”

“It was another great look for us, though, and I think we played the pace we wanted to really well,” he continued. “Right now, our goal is to be one of the fastest teams that there is, and we are doing pretty well with setting the pace we want, which is great to see.”

On Saturday, the Dogies put together their best game of the weekend as they faced off against the Broncs.

“We challenged the guys and we put the onus on defense and rebounding and I’ll tell you what, the difference was night and absolute day between what we did in the first two games and that one,” Von Eye said. “Anyone who watched could see an entirely different attention being paid to the defensive side of the floor, which is what this team has been known for historically.”

The Dogies led the ball game through almost all of the first three quarters before the Broncs took the lead by two heading into the fourth quarter.

In the final moments of the contest, the Dogies found themselves down three points before Thatcher buried a three from about 23 feet out with a second to play to push the game into overtime. Unfortunately, in the extended OT minutes, Newcastle was unable to score while the Broncs scored 12 points (all from the charity stripe) to take the win.

Von Eye noted that the lessons learned from pre-conference play is that the Dogies need to tighten up their defense, their rebounding and their accuracy from the free-throw line.

“This crew is capable of doing some really good things. They’re only going to get better, which we’ve already proven we are capable of doing,” Von Eye said. “We are going to be fun to watch and I think you’re going to see some amazing growth from them.”

Dogies are off until Jan. 11 when Newcastle hosts the Custer Wildcats with tip-off scheduled for noon, 1:30 and 3 p.m.