SKC lights up Great Falls
PABLO — The SKC Bison put on a show this past weekend in Pablo, breaking off two landslide wins over the University of Great Falls JV team. Winning by a score of 107-72 on Friday and 148-77 on Saturday, the team found out what it can do when things click.
Head coach Zach Camel said his team has always used the fast break and that it was devastating for Great Falls last weekend.
“We’ve always been a push-it-up team,” Camel said. “But it only works if you score. It’s hard to fast break if you let them score.”
Up by a margin of 80-40 going into the half on Saturday, it was clear SKC was hitting its chances and cutting the Argos off on theirs.
The game gave the team an opportunity to work on the different angles of its offense. The players began by taking the lead with quick runs down the field, working the ball inside for layups and the occasional dunk.
Great Falls had to collapse in response and by continuing to feed it inside, SKC’s many shooters stood by outside for passes.
And then they made it rain. Three-point shots and alley oops characterized a weekend where SKC made adjustments that worked, opening up too many ways to score to count.
On defense, SKC matched Great Falls guard for guard, generating steals and forcing ugly shots all night. Casey Weston and John Young each robbed the Great Falls point guard more than once for breakaway chances, Young choosing to wow the fans with slam-dunk attempts and Weston looking for the pretty dish at the end of the play.
Camel said size was a factor.
“You know we hardly ever see teams that are smaller than us and they were smaller than us,” he said.
Although his team is full of great athletes, Camel said it is usually out-sized by the competition. Camel said being bigger gave his team a chance to see it could do with its half-court game. With the confidence boost of a large lead, it wasn’t hard for his men to make their shots, dropping 13 threes on Saturday, and not missing much of anything else either.
He said center Sonny Eppinette’s inside presence gave his team a major advantage.
Eppinette led the team with 18 points on Friday and sniped one from behind the line for three on Saturday. Eppinette said his team did the little things right in the wins.
“We were getting to our spots, passing, making our plays, making shots, and taking care of business,” he said.
Camel was impressed with his team’s ability to continue doing the right things when the score began to set sail. They didn’t stop driving, but didn’t open themselves up to unnecessary injury. One player, guard Tim Wolf did go down in the first half with a knee injury. Wolf didn’t play the rest of the game, but Camel expects him to be back in action next week.
Camel also kept guard Dane Fisher out due to an injury so he would be 100 percent for next week’s matchup with Northwest Indian College.
Looking forward to the matchup and the rest of the season, Camel said his team has always had skill and is utilizing a new strength program to give them the power to match there ability. He said it’s already starting to work.
“We have skill and we put it together and that’s how we battle,” he said. “Week to week and game to game we get better.”
He said the new program should but a jump in the team’s step.
“It’s gonna pay off. Now we just got to get the conditioning and the legs under us and things are gonna turn out great for us,” he said.
The scoring was spread out across the board on Saturday, with Wes Spotted Bear leading the team with 24 points.