Bison prepare for tribal tourney
The Salish Kootenai College women’s basketball team is still making minor modifications as they venture closer to March.
“Mainly, our focus has been working on defense and making adjustments defensively where we need to be,” Bison Coach Juan Perez said. “Our team has done a lot of shooting and we know what we need to do for next week against Stone Child at home. They run a zone defense the whole time and we are working on a zone offense.”
On Friday, the Bison rescheduled one of their games with Yellowstone Christian College on Feb. 27 and 28.
“We will be rescheduling today’s games against Blackfeet over there and it will be within the next couple of weeks,” Perez said. “We will still get some games in at the end of the month. We kind of need to make sure that we are healthy and look to refine the little things.”
The Lady Bison are preparing for the AIHEC National Basketball Tournament in Rapid City, S.D. on March 15.
“The tournament will usually have around 10 to 12 teams from the women’s side show up,” Perez said. “We will play three games in pool play. On Thursday and Friday, we are going to put it into single-elimination back. If we don’t win, then we are done (for the season).”
The SKC Bison have received an added boost to their team with the addition of Julian Jones, a Polson graduate, and they hope Jones will become a key contributor to what they do.
“We are trying to get them all up to speed on all of the plays, what we do and how we do them in a little over a month,” Zack Camel said. “It’s going to be a really good addition to our team. Everyone is scoring pretty good. We just need to climb into what we do every year and get ready for the AIHEC.”
Camel said he put together a schedule to adequately prepare for what is becoming a more fiercely competitive AIHEC Tournament every season.
“Oh yeah, I tried to schedule the toughest schedule that we could and I want those guys because we aren’t going up against the 7-footers at the Frontier levels,” Camel said. “Everyone wants to play at different levels of basketball and I want them to be able to see it. We don’t have to be at that level to get ready for those moments and get ready to return to a championship.”
Zach Mills, a defending AIHEC MVP, is starting to get focused on the tournament run, according to Camel. Other players that are going to be important are Tisen Fryburg, and a new addition Josh Smith, who Camel labels as “deadly accurate” from the 3-point range.
“In all of the years that we’ve done this, this time we will try to four-peat,” Camel said. “That will be something new for us. We have to make sure that we win and do it the Bison way.”