With a 56-47 loss at Haven and a 71-34 loss at Collegiate, the Marion boys’ basketball team had a difficult weekend. The Warriors hosted Smoky Valley Feb. 12, posting a 67-62 loss in the season’s home finale.
Haven—Calvin Jeffrey scored 15 points and Eric Vogel 11 in Saturday’s loss.
“We struggled offensively for most of the game,” coach Rex Ostmeyer said. “We executed poorly and we shot poorly, and those two things together are not ingredients for success.”
Down 26-22 at halftime and trailing 40-27 after three quarters, Haven used a 10-for-12 foul shooting effort in the fourth quarter to preserve its lead despite a 20-point quarter by Marion.
“I felt like we really lacked energy and enthusiasm the entire game,” Ostmeyer said. “We picked it up in the fourth quarter, but they made free throws to keep us at bay.”
Collegiate—When the Spartans got a fast-break started with a 50-foot cannon-shot lead pass that zipped past two Warriors and scored a spectacular layup early in the game, the four-point deficit Marion had seemed only a little larger than the numbers on the scoreboard.
“We started OK, but we shot the ball poorly—that was a combination of Collegiate being solid defensively and us not executing great,” coach Rex Ostmeyer said. “We gave them too many second-chance points, too many points off of turnovers to stay with a team as good as they are.”
A technical foul in the waning moments of the first quarter helped Marion cut the lead to 13-10 before the start of the second. Luke Gordon scored first in the second, but Collegiate collected five fast points on a combination of field goals and foul shots.
Marion trimmed it to 18-14 on a backdoor layup by Justin Heidebrecht, but back-to-back scores prompted a Warriors timeout with 4:47 left in the second.
Those 4:47 were not kind to Marion. Collegiate built its lead to 34-18 and headed into halftime on a 16-4 run.
Spartan guard Andrew Hourani tallied 14 in the first two quarters, but Marion stymied him in the second half, limiting him to one basket the rest of the way.
Yet Collegiate’s scoring continued more or less unabated, with runs of 27-10 in the third and 10-6 in a fourth quarter shortened by a running clock.
Calvin Jeffrey scored 18 points, but the rest of the Warrior offense managed just 16 in the face of a superior defensive effort by the Spartans.
Coming—Marion wrapped up regular season play at Hesston Tuesday night. The sub-state play begins Monday.
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