The Hobbton Wildcats lost all three games at the hands of the Heide Trask Titans Thursday night, at home. The boys game ended in an 80-60 win for the Titans.
The first quarter score was reasonably close with a 21-17 Titan margin. However, in the second quarter, Trask hit their offensive stride outscoring the Wildcats 25 to 10 for a 46-27 lead. In the third, the Wildcats actually outscored the Titans 22 to 20 but that didn’t affect the lead the Titans had already built up. In the final quarter with the Titans playing younger players, the score margin was three in favor of the Titans, 14 to 11.
The Wildcats had a lot of players scoring; however, Jusen Bell led the scoring with 24. Will Simmons came off the bench scoring 12. Victor Aguirre had five, Dalyn Owens, Joe Olsen and DaCorris Morrison had four each. Jordan Pearsall, Jared Gainey and Jordan Knowles chipped in two each.
Despite the loss, Hobbton coach Alphonza Hooper had praise for his team.
“Trask has a good ball club. They run their sets well and are athletically quick like some other teams we’ve played,” commented Hooper. “Overall we came out and played with them the first half. Their athleticism got us some, one of our key players wasn’t here tonight. But like I told our players, next man up. That’s how we play, we competed with Trask but I think we got a little bit winded and it makes a difference.”
“They made a few more athletic moves, we just have to play together. We play tough non-conference competition; however, not taking anything away from our conference, I don’t think we will see that many athletes in the conference,” continued Hooper. “I challenged my group at halftime. I said let’s come out and play hard and give it everything we’ve got. We have played three tough ballgames this week. We are going to take tomorrow off and get ready for next week.”
“I like the effort out of my second group. Joe Olsen came out and grabbed six rebounds. I have to find a way to get him more minutes. I like the way that second group played; they played hard. We need to keep getting the wrinkles out and come back ready to play next week,” he concluded.
The Wildcats travel to Rosewood Tuesday for a conference match up and host the Midway Raiders Wednesday.
The Wildcat women lost 52-11 to Trask and the Wildcat JV lost 59-43. The Wildcat men are 1-5 on the season and the women and JV are 0-6.
