The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Host Telluride powerhouse this Friday
The process continues for the Crested Butte Titans boys’ basketball team and each week brings another challenge. Fortunately, the Titans don’t start league play until after the Christmas break so they’ve been using the latest string of non-league match-ups to gain critical experience.
With such an inexperienced team, preseason workouts focused primarily on fundamentals, fitness and defense. In addition, the few players who did have some varsity experience were called upon to become leaders.
The Titans defense and fitness appeared fairly intact two weeks ago as they held opponents to an average of 33 points in the season-opening tournament. Granted, they lost both games due, in part, to ice cold shooting. As a result, in the week of workouts prior to their game against the Ridgway Demons on Friday, December 12 coach Brandin Hamilton took the next step with his team.
“The week leading up to the game was really positive,” says Hamilton. “We worked on our offense in general and things were looking a little better.”
What the Titans were not prepared for was a player with height, ball skills and a shot.
“We pretty much discovered they had a six-foot-seven guy who could play,” says Hamilton. “We basically had to make adjustments to play around him.”
Despite the Titans’ youth, they ended up adjusting rather well to Ridgway’s big man. After a slow start, Hamilton adjusted his offensive set to pull the dominant Demon outside, opening up some quality shots.
Down 13-9 at the end of the first quarter, additional adjustment by the Titans on offense and defense allowed them to tie the game 17-17 by halftime.
The third quarter proved to be the biggest difference in the game, though. A change by the Ridgway defense handcuffed the Titans as the Demons started pressuring the ball farther out and left their big post player inside to wreak havoc. Ridgway ended up outscoring the Titans 14-4 in the third quarter to build a 31-21 lead heading into the fourth quarter.
“There were passing angles that the kids aren’t used to seeing,” says Hamilton.
Once again adjustments were made on the fly and the Titans had a new plan in place that exploited the Demon pressure up high, but their struggles with shooting showed up once again.
“Our shooting woes continued,” says Hamilton. “We started finding guys wide open but the ball just wasn’t going in. They’re still trying to find the rhythm of shooting.”
The Titans eventually fell 39-26 and while the Demon’s big man lit the Titans up for 26 points, Hamilton did see some positives.
“Both Tommy [Rainville] and Quinn [Winter] showed another gear in the rebounding presence,” says Hamilton. “Their big kid did not beat us on the boards. I told them they’re going to see more big guys who can play and that it was good experience.”
Junior Quinn Winter led the Titans with 11 points and senior Joe Hayes added in six points. The rest of the scoring was shared among four players.
The Titans have a huge challenge ahead of them this week when they host the Telluride Miners in mighty Mt. Olympus on Friday, December 20.
“Telluride is playing on all cylinders this year,” says Hamilton. “They’re averaging 61 points per game and have four guys scoring double digits. We’ll have our hands full.”
Tip-off for the first home games of the Titans season is at 4 p.m. with the boys’ varsity game slated to start at 8:30 p.m.
