Spartans shoot down Kingston in varsity hoops

Published 12:27 pm Monday, February 9, 2015

It was a sweet Senior Night success for the Spartans Saturday as they hosted Kingston High and breezed to a 48-32 victory.

The Bainbridge High varsity boys basketball team consistently outscored the visitors in every single quarter (12-10, 10-8, 13-8, 13-6) throughout the night, and earned a relatively effortless home court win which improved their overall season record to 9-7 (5-7 in league play).

The game’s overall vibe, Spartan Head Coach Scott Orness said afterward, was, admittedly, kind of weird.

“Kingston did a great job running the pack-line defense,” he said. “You could tell their game plan was to shoot the ball when there was under 10 seconds on the shot clock. Everyone on their team sprinted back on defense and did not rebound … so they made us run our half-court sets.”

“They wanted to shorten the game, meaning less possessions for us,” he added. “They did a great job of it, especially in the first half. So our goal was to speed the game up.”

In the second half, Orness explained, the Spartans moved away from their staple defensive tactics and, in order to deal with Kingston attempting to set the pace, worked at creating turnovers and steals in order to quicken the game.

It was only then that BHS began to truly pull ahead on the board.

“That’s the idea when you’re going against a team that’s maybe a little more talented than you are,” Orness said of the Kingston strategy. “We’ve done that multiple times as well when we play teams that are better than us.” Whatever the reasons, the fact remains that the win was a needed feather in the collective cap of this late-season Spartan squad.

BHS is now ranked in fifth-place in the Metro Mountain Division, behind Bishop Blanchet (9-9 overall) but above O’Dea (7-10).

Several Spartans sank and swished their way to the top of the score sheet Saturday.

Bainbridge behemoth Oskar Dieterich led the team in points, and racked up 18.

Blake Swanson managed 10 points, Dawson Gonwick contributed six and Danny Locascio ended the night with five.

Though not actually the final home game of the season — they played in Paski again Tuesday night — Orness said that Saturday was a better date for Senior Night as weekends tend to draw a better crowd, and more parents and fans are able to attend.

The team stands to lose eight seniors at the end of this season — a decisive majority of the varsity squad — including Jake Philby, Trent Schulte, Swanson, Gonwick, Locascio, Ben Beatie, Riley Irish and Dieterich.

The group is, Orness said, a particularly special one for him personally (he’s known many of them since they were in elementary school) and seeing them prepare to move on marked a definite end of a very unique era in BHS sports.

“They were just the type of kids, in middle school, that just knew how to have conversations with adults,” he said. “They’re really mature. They really had good heads on their shoulders then. They’re good kids [who] wanted to do well, on the court, in the classroom. They’re making good choices in their lives and I was like, ‘You know, this is the type of group that I’d want to try and build this thing with.’”

Several of these players who are now team leaders and role models for the junior squad members were the real voices that brought him back to the program after he stepped down from the coaching position before, Orness recalled.

“We’ve got great numbers turning out for boys basketball again,” he said. “Our Roots program has six boys teams and a few girls teams. We’ve got lots of kids involved, and basketball is hot on the island right now.”

“It’s great to see,” Orness added. “There’s a lot of enthusiasm, and these guys deserve a lot of the credit for building that and leaving that legacy.”

Legacy, Orness said, is important to him and the other coaches and was the primary reason they began the Bainbridge Roots Basketball program.

“I want it to be a legacy of great basketball, a foundation that builds young men of great character and for them to be able to leave with skills that are going to help them in every area of their life,” he explained. “It’s the job of the younger kids now to come in and build upon it, and they’re going to have to leave their own stamp.”

“We want it to stay strong, no matter what, for years to come,” he added.