Back from desert, ‘Cats scorch Tyee
Published 9:15 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008
The Mount Si Wildcats boys’ basketball team returned from their holiday tournament in Phoenix with better chemistry, and it showed in their game versus Tyee. With stifling defense and hot outside shooting, the Wildcats scorched Tyee 88-35 in front of a good-sized crowd in nonleague action Tuesday at Mount Si High School.
“We really played well. One of our problems early in the season with a young team, an inexperienced team, was our chemistry was a little bit messed up, and I think this trip that we just took to Phoenix helped out with that a lot and we shot the lights out tonight and executed real well tonight and offensively and put it all together,” said Mount Si coach Garrick Phillips.
Erik Tierney led a well-balanced offensive attack with 21 points for Mount Si, while Jeremy Johnston added 18, Bryan Gabriel had 17 and Chris Lyle had 15 to support the Mount Si charge.
Outside shooting was very strong, with Tierney, Gabriel and Lyle all hitting three-pointers to help the cause.
“Our guards were getting open shots, our posts were getting open moves and looks, we’re getting everything. I mean, we’re just on, if we can keep this up the rest of the season, we’ll be just fine,” said Johnston.
Defense was very strong as well, with the Wildcats holding Tyee, their former Seamount League rival, to just 35 points.
“The (boys) played with a lot of energy. We’ve been talking about that all year, we’ll play a couple of possessions real well, and then we’ll do something wrong or a shot that maybe we thought shouldn’t have gone in goes in for the other team and then we hang our heads and lose our intensity, but we really had a little pop in our step tonight. Our [boys] played real hard,” said Phillips.
Gabriel hopes this is the start of something big coming down the stretch for the Wildcats.
“I think we’re going to surprise a lot of teams in the second half,” he said, adding, “I think we’re going to cruise through a lot of teams; hopefully, we’ll make the playoffs.”
As for Tyee, Chris Merrill and Eddie Thompson led the Totems in scoring with nine and eight points, respectively.
