The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“It was two different games”
By Than Acuff
After a tightly contested first half where the Crested Butte Titans boys’ basketball team seemed to be doing everything right, a three-minute breakdown by the Titans ultimately led to the Ouray Trojans pulling away and handing the Titans a 56-36 loss on Wednesday, December 17.
It was slated to be a tough match up for Crested Butte as Ouray is one of the top 1A teams in the state and has a player considered one of the best in 1A and who came into Crested Butte on the cusp of scoring his 1,000th point as a high school player. Not only that, but the kid stands 6’7” tall with Crested Butte’s tallest player just cracking six feet at 6’1”.
Regardless, the plan was in place for the Titans and was pretty simple. Their best player will get his points so the job at hand was to limit scoring from the rest of the Trojan team.
And, for the most part, that was working and then some, as not only was the Titans defense holding tight against the rest of the team, they were also holding tight against Ouray’s best player as both Bennett Crabtree and Tyus Fischer were handed the task to guard him, with everyone else on alert to double and triple team him when he had the ball.
But you have to score as well and the Titans did as Fischer knocked down a three-pointer and a short jumper, Crabtree drove the lane for two, Owen Pugh found an opening to hit a baseline jumper and John Mitchell hit a free throw to help pace the Titans to a 10-7 lead by the end of the first quarter.
“Usually we start out slow, so I’ll take double-digit points in the first quarter,” says head coach Mike Bacani.
Ouray did score the first two buckets of the second quarter to jump out in front but when Isaac Jennings took on Ouray’s tallest player defensively to strip the ball and the rest of the team dove in for the loose ball in a mad scramble, the tone was set for the second quarter as well.
Blake Bacani came into the game to drain a three-pointer and another jumper further inspiring the team with his effort. Pugh scored again, Fischer hit another three-pointer and then Pugh’s bucket at the buzzer had the Titans up 22-19 at halftime.
“When you hold a team like that to under 20 points in the first half, that’s a good thing,” says Bacani. “I couldn’t have drawn up a better first half. Nothing to complain about really.”
The message was clear for the Titans at halftime: turn it up a notch.
“I told them to keep attacking on offense and defense and wear them out,” says Bacani.
But a different Ouray team came out in the third quarter. Not only did they step up their efforts on defense, but their team got hot from the perimeter to put together a 15-1 run in the opening three minutes to take a 34-23 lead that would eventually become a 38-23 lead midway through.
“All the work we had done in the first half was erased,” says Bacani.
Pugh would eventually steal the ball to go coast-to-coast for a layup to breathe a little life back into the Titans and after a long delay due to a contested goaltending call, Crested Butte decided to bust out a press that started to cause a ruckus. Led by the efforts of Fischer and Jennings in the press, Crested Butte disrupted the Trojans for a bit setting up Mitchell for a three-pointer and four points for Crabtree, including a fan favorite reverse layup, to end the nightmarish third quarter and pull back within 12 of Ouray.
“The delay allowed my assistant coaches to get the team settled back down, put in the press and slow the game down,” says Bacani. “I don’t think anyone thought we were totally out of it.”
That’s when Ouray’s top player found some room though as he completed his personal task to score his 1,000th point while his teammates remained hot as well and the Trojans finished off their 56-36 win. Fischer ended the game with 10 points and six rebounds, Pugh knocked down nine points, Crabtree scored six and Blake finished with five points and five rebounds.
“It was two different games,” says Bacani. “The first half was indicative of what we can do but we have to play to our ceiling all four quarters. The coaches need to be 100%, and the players need to be 100%, and we weren’t 100% for three minutes.”
The Titans now head into the holiday break with some shooting contests on tap for some of the allowed workouts, and then continued work on reaching 100% for all four quarters.
“When we have the full crew back, we want to be at least as good as we are now, if not better,” says Bacani. “We’re calling the first five games of the season our preseason and there’s still 18 games to go and we want to be playing our best basketball by the end of January.”
