FHS Braves, fans get fix
The Daily Inter Lake
The Flathead High School boys basketball team made a gym full of fans happy they attended the prep scene Saturday, considering they had to give up watching the Eagles-Saints NFL playoff game.
The stands were surprisingly-somewhat packed. The stands on the ends of the court were empty, but both echelons of bleachers on the sides were completely filled and the fans were loud.
Having not played at home since before Christmas and being just the third home game of the season, I guess Braves' fans needed a fix - in a couple meanings of the word.
With the town (and team) having dreams of a state championship, the final-season-of-not-split-Class AA squad had been playing .500 ball since the second week of the season. They were coming off a disheartening loss to Missoula Hellgate on the road after having lost to Missoula Sentinel and the same Helena team on the road.
But the fans' (and team's) fix came with an up-tempo 82-75 home-town victory that made it hard to get phone updates on the NFL game.
Then afterward, everybody had all the solutions to what was wrong with the team.
Senior post Geoff Hogan described a team meeting and what transpired out of it. Coach Fred Febach explained a certain mentality the team had to play with and how the boys were coming to grips with understanding it. I wrote about those in the game article. But they all also explained a little X's and O's.
"We've been fouling too much," Febach said. "Hellgate made 21 of 27 free throws and scored only 49 points at home to beat us. (Then) we fouled to much (in this game) in the first half. We have to avoid fouls. It gives our opponents too many free baskets."
The Braves committed so many early fouls that Helena was in bonus free-throw shooting with 1 minute, 48 seconds left in the first quarter. The Bengals went 7-for-10 from the foul line in the second quarter and went 10-for-15 from the free-throw line total in the first half.
After committing 12 first-half fouls, the Braves had nine in the second half. The result: Helena was 5-for-12 from the foul line in the second half and lost by seven.
Fortunately for the Braves, the Bengals were committing just as many fouls and the Braves went 10-for-13 from the foul line in the first half. But they made only six of 18 free throws in the second half.
"With the number of free throws we had opportunities and it helped us keep our cushion and help in our confidence against their press," Febach said.
In regards to Helena's press and man-to-man and man-zone defensive concepts, Hogan explained how the Braves handled it better than in the Dec. 19 loss.
"We didn't panic and we played tough through it," he said. "For the most part, we did a good job of getting through and making good passes. We handled it much better. They played a good, solid physical defense and you've got to be able to handle it.
"We've seen Helena before so we had a good idea of what to expect but we knew, up to this point, we hadn't been playing good basketball. So we wanted to find ourselves in this game and I think we did a great job of doing that."
Hogan was especially impressive passing through the defense while tallying five assists from the post. Fellow post Brock Osweiler and point guard Jake Thiesen each had three assists as the Braves had 17 total.
The boys still had 21 turnovers and that's a sign of just how young they are. The team has just three seniors with Hogan, Luke Cutler and Brad Huff. But seven of those turnovers came in the final quarter and 13 of them came in the second half.
The Braves have two games against Class A foes - Columbia Falls and Whitefish - this weekend before getting back into the second half of their Western AA schedule.
Those games could do wonders for everone's fix.