Daily Sitka Sentinel

Braves See Strong Start To The B-Ball Season

The MEHS Girls Basketball Team -- Back row, from left: team manager Nikki Peidlow, Brystel Charlie, Catherine Sunny, Sanora Bell, Paige Goodwin, Sasha Saccheus, Autumn Beans and Leticia Skaflestad. Front row, from left: Danielle Go, Daisy Hunt, Tyra Brown, Kennedy Stumpf and Sherilyn Johnson-Edwards. (Sentinel Photo)

The Mt. Edgecumbe High School basketball teams have begun the season with a bang, quickly finding footing and success at the start of the season.
    On Wednesday, the boys beat Nikiski at home in their first game of the season, 73 to 53.
    The Braves trailed the Bulldogs by 1 point at the end of the first quarter, but surged ahead in the second quarter. At the half, MEHS was ahead, 43 to 32.
    Throughout the remaining two quarters, they widened their lead and finished 20 points ahead of their opponents.
    Head Coach Archie Young attributed his team’s win to their strong offense and successful shooting.
    “For a first game, I felt like we shot the ball well – exceptionally well,” he said.
    Young added that his team’s debut performance revealed room for improvement on the defensive end of the court, though with the Braves’ second match of the season on Thursday little time was left for running drills and honing skills.
    “Defensively, we definitely have some things we need to work on,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do other than talk about it and make small adjustments overnight. Hopefully, we can improve our focus on a few things.”
    Jamal Alstrom racked up 31 points for the Braves, leading Young to tout his performance as particularly impressive.
    “I was really pleased with how Jamal Alstrom played,” he said. “He did exceptionally well, and it was exciting to see.”
    On Thursday, fresh off of their first win, the Braves squared off against the Bartlett High School Golden Bears in their first game of the Grace Classic Tournament in Anchorage.
    MEHS trailed throughout the game, lagging by 10 points on multiple occasions.
    With 2.4 seconds left in regulation time, however, Alstrom hit the go-ahead basket to put the Braves up by 2. Young reported that a “miscommunication on defense” led his team to give up an “easy bucket” in the little time remaining, sending the game into overtime.
    He said that in the last 90 seconds of overtime, one player in particular put the team on the path toward victory.
    “Ben Exe was huge,” Young said. “He took four to five charges throughout the game, but two of them were in the final 90 seconds overtime. Taking charges is one of the best team plays a player can make.”
    The Braves ended up rallying for a win, edging their opponents, 75 to 73.
    “I was really proud of the boys and how they finished,” Young said. “After giving up a layup at a buzzer to send it into overtime it would have been very easy for us to lose focus and momentum. However, these guys hung tough and pulled out a good win!”
    The Braves were slated to take on Kotzebue at 4:45 p.m. on Friday and Grace Christian on Saturday in the remainder of the Grace Christian Tournament.
    Young expressed hope that his team would be able to improve their defensive play, emphasizing that the Braves had to get better at boxing out their opponents if they intended to continue their success.
    The girls, for their part, earned a lopsided win in their debut game against the Houston Hawks on Wednesday in Sitka. The Braves trounced their opponents, 80 to 38
    “I was very happy,” said Head Coach Kathy Forrester. “They did a great job coming together, especially for the amount of practices they’d had.”
    Daisy Hunt scored 23 of her team’s points, and Catherine Sunny scored 13. Forrester praised both girls’ level of play, as well as Sonora Bell’s.
    “Any time Daisy steps on the court, it’s game time,” Forrester said. “Catherine shot well, and Sonora Bell is a real spark out there.”
    Thursday, the Braves took on Kotzebue in Anchorage in the Grace Classic Tournament, and, at first, struggled to achieve the same results as the day prior. In the end, they pulled off a win, 59 to 53.
    “The first half was a little bit challenging for us,” Forrester said. “We had a hard time hanging on to the ball and making the proper passes that we were supposed to be making.”
    She praised Kotzebue’s sharp shooting, which Paige Goodwin and Bell countered by “dominating the inside” to put the Braves over the top.
    Forrester reported that Sasha Saccheus, too, was instrumental in the team’s victory.
    “I was impressed with her calmness with handling the ball and attacking (the) basket,” she said.
    The Braves sunk 51 percent of their two-point shots and 25 percent of their three-point shots in both games, maintaining a remarkably consistent performance across the two. Forrester said her goal is to raise that rate over the course of the season.
    She also plans to devote attention to the details of each skill and habit her players use on the court, confident that they have the basics down pat and can now focus on elevating their level of play.
    “They know how to play ball,” she said. “It’s really just the details they need to take care of. We are a tough team.”