Boys basketball falls to North Fork Miners

“They were definitely more game ready”

By Than Acuff

It had been over three weeks since the Crested Butte Titans boys’ basketball team had a game. They went into the holiday break gaining momentum only to have the hiatus halt them in their tracks. While they had a week of practices before their first game after the break, they still struggled to find their gametime intensity falling to the North Fork Miners 56-51 on Saturday, January 11.

“Practices were good, but we did spend a bit of time to get familiar with our plays and systems and re-acclimatization,” says coach Mike Bacani. “I still felt we were prepared.”

Yet, it is still impossible to replicate game speed in practices and that was evident as North Fork, who already had three games under their belt after the break, set the pace in the opening minutes to build a 7-0 lead. A timeout allowed the Titans to regroup and led by five points from Luke Jennings and a solid team effort on the defensive boards, they closed the first quarter with an 8-2 run to pull within one of the Miners.

Bridger Flores opened the second quarter with a three-pointer, but North Fork responded before Eli Hulm sank a three-pointer and the two teams traded blows throughout the second quarter with another bump coming from Ronan Conroy’s pump fake and eight-footer, but a North Fork three-pointer had them up 22-20 at halftime.

“There was a lot of rust the first quarter and a half,” says Bacani. “But at halftime we talked about how we fought back and that we wanted to start out more aggressively on defense.”

The move to full court pressure and aggressive defensive play had an initial impact as the Titans pulled ahead 28-24 but they couldn’t build on that as the Miners matched the Titans’ intensity and saw success on the offensive boards to get second and third looks at the basket. Hulm continued to lead the Titans on both ends of the court including a silky “Eurostep” layup and a three-pointer from Adin Kurak kept the Titans out front with a 36-34 lead by the end of the third quarter.

“Eli was on another level,” says Bacani. “We were playing well but we had a couple mistakes that didn’t allow us to grab the lead and take it from there.”

Hulm, Kurak and Jennings all contributed at the start of the fourth quarter to keep the Titans out front but a player for the Miners who had been quiet all game sank a couple of three-pointers and when a foul on Flores then turned into a technical against Flores, the Titans unraveled briefly allowing North Fork to pull ahead 50-45 with just over a minute left to play when Bacani called a timeout.

“I thought we still had a 50/50 chance of winning,” says Bacani.

While the play Bacani drew up during the time out paid off opening Kurak up for a three-pointer, the Titans were forced to foul North Fork to stop the clock and North Fork hit six of eight free throws down the stretch to seal the 56-51 win. Hulm and Kurak led the Titans with 14 points each, Flores finished with 11 and Jennings scored nine.

“They were definitely more game ready,” says Bacani. “We didn’t rebound as well as we could have and some of that was rust at game speed. This is a type of game we need to have to put ourselves in a better spot as we head into the post season. We learned a lot in that game.”

The Titans stay at home this weekend as they host Caprock Academy on Saturday, January 18, tipoff is at 2:30 p.m. They then have 15 more games over the next six weeks as they look to earn a spot in the post season.

“I’m interested to play Caprock,” says Bacani. “They have quite a bit of length, but I think we’re quicker.”