Bulldogs coach designs team for district tourney

Mission High School head basketball coach Gus McDonald has methodically constructed his young team with one goal in mind: tournament time.

Slow and steady, McDonald is starting to see his plan come together as the Bulldogs are starting to get a mixture of results as opposed to losses, and this week was no different.

The Bulldogs fell to Florence 50-41, one of the top teams in Class-B and in their conference.

“We are really getting to where we should be and where we want to be,” McDonald said. “We aren’t quite there right now but I’ll accept what we are doing and that our team is giving 100 percent effort.”

McDonald, a 2006 Bulldogs’ graduate, said he wants his team to keep progressing as tournament time rapidly approaches.

“We just have to keep progressing and come tournament time, hopefully we will be able to figure out the little things in our game and just try to take everything one game at a time,” McDonald said. “We have switched some things up that didn’t work and we are trying to figure some things out now. We are starting to get into a groove with our offense and defense. We have to eliminate turnovers because when we commit turnovers, we give opportunities to guys to make layups. That is the area of our game we have to work on to stop.”

The Bulldogs split this week’s games with a non-conference 60-52 victory over Eureka.

“We are starting to see a 100 percent turnaround and what we got going is the progression,” McDonald said. “Everyone is starting to bond as a team and find that basketball mentality. We are almost there but I can’t say that we are fully there yet.”

McDonald used his team’s big lead against Eureka to give some of his younger players some experience. By getting his younger varsity players further experience, he looks to create depth for his team.

“I can’t just have my starters in all of the time,” McDonald explains. “We have a couple of freshman and a couple of JV players that hustle for me and are still a little shaky. In order for them to be good at tournament time, we have to have everyone on the same page. Just getting our kids that experience will help achieve that. During tournament time, we may have some kids sick or injured and our bench players may be in a situation where they have to come off the bench and play. I was happy with how our bench players played and filled in for our starters. They played a good game.”

One area McDonald said he hopes to improve on come tournament time is the team’s free throw percentage. Currently, the Bulldogs are averaging 27 free throw attempts a game and only make eight or nine, according to McDonald.

“We have to continue to pick up our free throw percentage,” McDonald said. “Our free throw percentage is still not good and that is killing us. It is preventing us from being right in the games. However, our kids are starting to figure out the game. We are slowly starting to become a family and build that family camaraderie.”

In the win to Eureka the Bulldogs had contributions from several scorers. The Dogs were led by Elijah Cahoon who scored 19 points, Flint McPherson scored seven points, Beedo Matt had five, Levi Alexander had three, Jacob Hugs had two. In the loss against Florence the Bulldogs again got contributions from Cahoon. Cahoon led the team in points scored with 19 In the previous two games combined Cahoon has scored a total of 38 points leading the Dogs. Wacey McClure finished with nine, Isaac Alexander had seven, Beedo Matt had four, and Colin Linsebinger finished with one point.

“All of our players are really picking up on defense and our we probably had 13 steals,’ McDonald said. “We probably did a better job on defense on Saturday night. We are slowly coming together and that is a lot more to build on. McDonald, who was part of a Mission team his sophomore year that surprised several teams to go to the District Championship said he sees a lot of similiarities between this team and the team he played on during his sophomore year as a member of the Dogs.

“We aren’t losing by a lot of and we are kind of running out of time,” McDonald said. “Our team is fighting hard and doing everything that we can and our players continue to buy into the program and if they keep going that way we are going to do some good thins come tournament time.”