Bobcats end season at regionals

The Bobcat boys basketball team had a rough go at the Regional Tournament last weekend in Newcastle, losing both of their games to end their season.

The Cats came up against the Rawlins Outlaws first, losing 40-50.

“This was a tough game for us,” said coach Shane Corpening. “I thought we did a great job on the defensive end of the court. Rawlins really struggled to score versus our half court defense.

“However, we did struggle to rebound the basketball, which allowed Rawlins to have some easy put backs and it put us into foul trouble.”

Corpening went on to say the team struggled a bit offensively as well.

“We had some bad turnovers that came back to haunt us and we didn’t shoot the ball as well as I would have liked. We put ourselves in a position to win the game towards the end of the fourth quarter.”

The Cats were down by just two points with about two minutes left on the clock, but missed some critical free throws and had a couple of bad turnovers.

“I was extremely proud of the effort from our boys,” Corpening said. “Rawlins is a talented team and we were right there with them. There were some moments where we got down by 8-10 points, but we fought our way back and gave ourselves a chance at the end.”

Top scorers against the Outlaws were Sterling Gerber and Duder Harvey with nine points each. Harvey also added five assists to his stats.

Jase Longwell wasn’t far behind with seven points, followed by Jarron Mortimore with six points and five rebounds.

The next day the boys lost to Burns, 39-55.

“We had a slow start against Burns,” Corpening said, “which proved to be costly. We found ourselves down by about ten points midway through the first quarter, but we rallied back to trim their lead to three points going into the second quarter.

“Offensively we did not play very well in the second quarter, but our defense kept us in the game. We trailed 20-12 going into the locker room.”

Corpening said Burns was able to acquire a 22-point lead in the second half before the Cats woke up.

Midway through the fourth quarter the boys went on a 12-0 run, trimming Burns’ lead down to 10 points with about four minutes left in the game.

“I thought we were going to pull off the comeback,” Corpening said, “but we missed some free throws and some shots we normally make and it just didn’t happen for us.

“This game was puzzling. We out rebounded Burns, we forced more turnovers than they did, and we took close to 20 more shots than they did. As a coach, that’s exactly what you want, but at the end of the day, basketball is all about putting the ball in the hole and we didn’t do that.”

The boys shot 13/65 from the field, 20%, compared to Burns who shot 21/48, 44%.

“It definitely was a bitter loss,” Corpening said, “but I was proud of the way they fought as hard as they could and we were close to pulling off the comeback at one point.”

Gerber and Harvey again led the way for the Bobcats, scoring nine points each. Mortimore and Cade McLean each had eight.

“It was a disappointing way to end our season,” Corpening said, “but I think we had a good year overall. We were one win away from winning the 3A Northeast Quad, we doubled our win total from a year ago, we won our first conference games since returning to 3A in 2016, and I felt, short of Worland, we were competitive against every team we played against this year.

“Something I try to tell the boys all the time is to leave something better than the way you found it, and I think our outgoing seniors have done exactly that in regards to our basketball program.”