Cats end regular season with a pair of losses
Logan Stephens takes a shot against Whitefish last week.
They’re playing hard, but the shots just aren’t dropping. The Columbia Falls boys basketball team lost two more games last week, a 56-41 tilt against Whitefish at home Thursday and a 66-56 loss to Stevensville on the road Saturday.
The boys ended the regular season at 2-16.
Against the Bulldogs, the game was closer than the score would suggest. A couple of times, the Wildcats cut the margin to six, but just couldn’t get over the hump. They actually played pretty well defensively. Logan Stephens led the squad with 17, Austin Green had 10.
Coach Chris Finberg was pleased with the team’s defensive effort, noting at one point, they were down 18-4.
But with a thin bench, the boys got tired and the bunnies didn’t fall.
“We kind of ran out of gas,” Finberg said.
Against Stevensville, Stephens had 23 and Quintin Schriver had his best game with 10. Green had 10 as well.
Schriver also had eight rebounds and took two charges, Finberg noted.
The team is without Matt Morrison, who left the Whitefish game with a season-ending foot injury.
So they’ll play a five guard set and look to tighten down their defense a bit with the hope they can place in the top four at the divisional tourney, which would give them a state tourney berth.
“We’re going to have to play our best basketball of the year,” Finberg said.
They open the divisional tourney in Hamilton with the play-in game at 12:45 p.m. Wednesday against Stevi. Win that game and they’d face Dillon, the top-ranked team in the state. If they lose, they’d face the loser of the Hamilton-Frenchtown game.
Whitefish 18 5 16 17 — 56
Columbia Falls 6 13 12 10 — 41
WHITEFISH — Derek Kastella 20, Murphy Wick 2, Sawyer Silliker 12, Ryan Kemm 11, Lee Walburn 6, Dillon Botner 5.
COLUMBIA FALLS — Austin Green 10, Logan Stephens 17, Quintin Schriver 4, Matthew Morrison 8, DJ Schrade 2.
Columbia Falls 11 13 14 18 – 56
Stevensville 15 17 17 17 – 66
Columbia Falls – Austin Green 11, Logan Stephens 23, Quintin Schriver 10, Dakota Bridwell 8, DJ Schrade 4.
Stevensville – Jarod Kingsbury 23, James Fry 13, Dalton Bragg 9, Chayse Richards 10, Alex Gavlak 8, Luis Estrada 3.