HUMBOLDT — With a bucket full of unknowns coming into the 2017 season, Humboldt boy’s head coach Dave Taylor knew that his team couldn’t afford to try to find undiscovered territory early in the season. Just do what the Cubs do best — defense, controlling the pace, playing smart basketball — and hopefully, the wins and experience will come.
For roughly two and a half quarters they did just that and it was enough to earn Humboldt its first win of the season, 71-67 over Eureka.
“I thought when we did what we do, we looked very good,” Taylor said. “When we did what they want to do and what we don’t really work on we didn’t look very good. We were fortunate. They got all of the momentum and then things got tighter. We made the game a little tighter than it should’ve been.”
In the first half, the Cubs were flying. They led by six after the first quarter and took a 32-17 lead into the second half thanks in part to 17 points from sophomore Conor Haviland.
Haviland was the one of two double-figure scorers, (senior Hesston Murrow, 18 points) ending his night with 23 points with a 77 percent shooting percentage.
“He had a really good game,” Taylor said. “I thought what he did to score his points was within what we do offensively, so that made it a lot easier for him. He didn’t make himself work.”
The Cubs picked up right where they left off, eclipsing the 20-point mark in their lead and seemed destined for an easy finish.
That’s when senior Tornado guard Kash Parmes came to life.
The stud for Eureka had been kept quiet in the first half, scoring just four points before intermission. But Parmes went off for 23 more after the break and got the Tornados within two.
“I thought we did real well in the first half against him,” Taylor said. “But when we got tight he got a little rhythm going. We got rattled. He’s tough to defend off of the dribble and when the wheels fell off for us, he was cooking.”
The Cubs were able to eliminate a lot of second-chance looks thanks to their 27 rebounds, 19 on defense, led by senior Colin Gillespie who had 13 rebounds to go along with seven points and four assists.
In addition to some lax defense, one of the biggest factors that led to Cubs opening the door for a Eureka comeback was Humboldt going 22 of 38 from the free throw line.
The Cubs led by 10 by the end of third quarter and saw their lead diminish to almost nothing but two breakaway layups in a row by Haviland kept the Tornadoes at arm’s length.
“A lot of them haven’t been in a situation where they had to just gut it out,” Taylor said. “There’s a lot of positives. The kids played hard and I thought we defended well at first but we lost track of what the situation was but a lot of them haven’t been in that situation. There’s a lot we can build on.”
The Cubs are now 10 and will take on Uniontown on Tuesday to open the Humboldt preseason tournament.
HUMBOLDT 71,
