Young Warriors roll in first half of the season

ARLEE — Arlee High School boys basketball coach Zanen Pitts believes the concept of negativity is a psychologically induced phenomenon.

Pitts said he believes negative experiences in sports such as losses are only negative if they are interpreted as such.

When Pitts’ young, inexperienced Warrior team fell to conference foe Plains 71-67. Pitts took the loss in stride.

“Any time you look at a negative and you pursue it as a negative, you aren’t going to get anything out of it,” Pitts said. “Everything can be looked at as a positive. We can flip this (situation), turn it into a big-time positive and see a lot of good things that come with that. It’s a great opportunity to fix things. We will go back and look at film. There will be no school for the next ten days so we will watch film, go to basketball school and work on areas that we struggled in.”

The Warriors’ record makes it even easier for Pitts to take it in stride when his team has a 5-1, 2-1 conference record and are one of the favorites to emerge of the Class-C 14 District in which he and Plains both are two of the top-rated basketball teams in Montana Class-C.

“This is what I’ve been saying about how young of a team we have,” Pitts explained. “People don’t realize that there are times when we have kids that are winning with only one kid on the floor with varsity experience (Tyler Tanner). All of our young kids are playing up against four seniors and the junior starter. They had just destroyed us on the boards.”

Pitts attributed the four-point loss to Plains to “inexperience.”

“Our young kids made some mistakes down the stretch, and you have to have those games and let your kids learn,” Pitts said. “It’s pretty simple. Had we defeated Plains, we would have become complacent and then really gotten throttled (in another game). Now, because we lost, we will have to make these adjustments in order to give them a good game at their place in the next conference match.” Pitts even decided to refer to the loss as “great.” “It was a great loss, a really good game and a fun game to be a part of,” Pitts said. “It was really good for the spectators. You would love to chase that zero (in the loss column) but it really takes some pressure off our team. Now, we can just stay focused.”

Pitts said he felt his team responded immediately to the adverse loss with an 81-49 victory over St. Regis Thursday night at Arlee High School’s gymnasium.

“When we watched filmed of the Plains game, we really broke down each of their roles and we were able to take care of their responsibility,” Pitts said. “(The Plains kid) had 19 rebounds or whatever it was. When you are running five guards, it is hard to remind them to rebound and box out. You have to remind them. As a team that isn’t as big of a rebounding team, you have to go back and work on things. We watched some film before we played St. Regis.”

The young Warriors team is still in the process of learning from their mistakes and Pitts expects them to make mistakes as part of the learning process. “Oh yeah, the kids are still learning their roles and spots,” Pitts said. “Its exciting and fun to watch them change. It’s like watching a horse. Every day it gets a little bit better.”

The Warriors will have some challenges as they will face one of their rivals, an upstart and remolded Mission High School team, after the break. They will then have “Jan. 27” marked on their calendar when Arlee has a rematch with their conference rival Plains.

“It’s all about setting goals and having a good coaching staff,” Pitts said. “I’ve been thinking about a lot of different things (related to basketball). I’ve been thinking on challenging a kid on his weaknesses. If he averages one rebound a game and gets seven, then I will take him out for a chocolate shake or something like that. We just have to get kids to do things out of the norms in whatever they are weaker at. That should carry over when we play tougher games. (Against tougher opponents), if a kid that struggles with rebounds gets more than his average, that could be the difference in a tight game. I would also like to keep our guards to having zero turnovers in a game. We just have to keep playing little mind games with them to keep them motivated.”

Though the Warriors still have a long way to go to get them to “peak” come playoff time,

Pitts said he felt his team is working hard to obtain its desired goals.

“We have worked so hard to get to this point and we still have to try hard to get even better,” Pitts said. “We are subbing so much and we are still only six games into the season. We have a lot of season left and we are still just growing.”

Plains 71, Arlee 67

Plains 10 15 25 21 – 71

Arlee 16 14 17 20 – 67

PLAINS – Jay Vonheeder 23, Ryan Ovitt 21, Alec Cole 12, Aaron Vonheeder 6, Kyle Weeks 5, Sam Rehbein 4.

ARLEE – Philip Malatare 25, Will Mesteth 17, Tyler Tanner 14, Greg Whitesell 9, Colt Brazill 2. (Tu20Dec16)