Pirates look to maintain momentum in postseason

The Polson Pirates boys basketball team ended its season with a 10-game win streak and celebrated senior night with exclamation point with a convincing 78-31 season-finale victory over Whitefish Saturday at Linderman Elementary School.

Pirates Coach Randy Kelley said he felt the kids put together a solid four quarters of basketball and executed well on offense and defense to give the seniors a proper send-off.

“Our offense is just clicking and I was really happy with our defensive effort,” Kelley said. “We tried to mix it up again early against Whitefish, playing between a 1-2-1 zone and man-to-man.”

With the victory, the Polson Pirates were led by Jeremiah North Piegan, who scored 24, and Matthew Rensvold and Tanner Wilson each scored 17 each.

According to Kelley, the Pirates received a lot of contributions from their front court, J’Von Johnson and Jaden Bautista.

“(Those two) just did a good job of sharing the ball and they scored in double figures,” Kelley said. “I am proud of the fact that we are rebounding the ball well. Jeremiah had nine. We’ve been consistent in the most important aspect in that we are executing both the offense and defense.”

After the Pirates lost their Jan. 13 double-overtime game against Frenchtown 76-75, they haven’t lost a game since then.

“Since we lost that double-overtime game, I’ll say that we are just on a roll and I think we are peaking at the right time,” Kelley said. “That is something that we’ve talked about a lot and it it is just happening at the right time of the year going into Divisionals.”

The Pirates have come together at the right time and also avenged their double-overtime loss by ‘turbo-clocking’ Frenchtown 75-34 in their Jan. 27 rematch.

Now the Pirates, who are currently on a ten-game win streak, will play Corvallis in the first round of the Divisionals at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Hamilton High School.

In the first meeting with Corvallis, the Pirates won easily in the second game of the season at the Missoula Tip-off 77-43. In that game, Rensvold scored 19, North Piegan scored 16, and Bautista finished with 10.

Kelley said he felt his team executed well against Corvallis after looking at the film.

“When we look at the film from the beginning of the year, we are a different team,” Kelley said. “I am pretty sure they are a different team too. We will be going back and looking at some of the stuff we did: we shared the ball, moved the ball and pushed the ball to the transition points of our offense.”

Despite struggling early in the season by starting the season 1-4 with losses to perennial Class A state contenders such as Dillon and other losses to Double-A schools, Kelly said his team wasn’t “discouraged.”

“Because we rolled off some wins, our team wasn’t discouraged early,” Kelley said. “They showed up to practices, played hard and have gotten better. They are just playing well together right now.”

Kelley credits the play of Bautista and North Piegan. North Piegan is a transfer from Ronan, and Bautista is a player that according to Kelley, had never played a varsity game in his life.

“Without the contributions of those two, who knows where we would be at,” Kelley said.

In the hypothetical scenario the Pirates would defeat Corvallis, they would play the winner of Butte Central and Whitefish, and both opponents, according to Kelley, would be “difficult.”

“After playing Whitefish, I know they played better basketball than what they did last year and I would have given them the nod to Butte Central,” Kelly said. “They play the same type of schedule (that we have). They have been on a roll lately, too but we have to prepare for them both.”