Chiefs basketball on a roll with victories over Frenchtown, Mission

Ronan High School boys basketball coach Mitchell Wassum and his team continue to build momentum as they progress further into the season.

Wassum’s Chiefs defeated the No. 5 ranked team in Class A, Frenchtown, Friday night and then followed them up with a 66-61 victory over their cross country rival, Mission, Saturday night at the Ronan Events Center.

Wassum said battling with Mission is a similar atmosphere to playing Ronan because of the proximity of the teams.

“It’s another Mission Valley game and playing Mission is a battle,” Wassum said. “There are a lot of teams all across class A, B and C. Kids all know each other so it’s a very friendly rivalry before the game. I don’t know if it is as big of a deal for the kids as it is for the alumni because there are several alumni that have coached on both sides. We are only 17 and 15 miles apart and we are always playing in packed gyms. It’s just a really fun atmosphere.”

The Chiefs, who played three games this week, played against an up-and-coming Mission Bulldogs team with their second-year coach Gus McDonald.

“They played extremely hard and we went 59-49,” Wassum said. “With two minutes left, Mission battled right back after they went up by double-digits earlier. They actually looked like they were going to take the lead and they played really hard. They are a scrappy team and they had guys playing all over the place and kids playing hard.”

Wassum credited several of Mission’s top-tier players for being able to contain some of the Chiefs potent weapons on offense.

“They are athletic and Wacey McClure and Jacob Hugs are phenomenal athletes,” Wassum said. “They have a lot of good athletes around them. You have to give credit to the football program for getting them in the weight room all summer that allowed them to be able to successfully transfer from one sport to another. Mission is in good shape and they are more dynamic.”

Wassum said he was “proud” of the way his team responded to the multiple looks they got from Sentinel, Frenchtown and Mission.

“Beating Frenchtown was a huge win bcause they were one of the top-5 teams in Class A and Sentinal on Tuesday because they are the No. 1 team in double A,” Wassum said. Mission was doubling Camel and playing man-to-man on Zeke and others kids. We survived and advanced. It doesn’t matter how you get the win. I was proud of the way we were able to get the win by getting to the free throw line against Mission. I was happy.”

Wassum said he is pleased with the amount of production his team is able to get out of multiple contributors including Ezekiel Misa, Dallas Durheim and Anthony Camel, just to name a few that give the Chiefs the luxury of having multiple players that can play multiple positions as Wassum’s Chiefs get ready to play the second half of their conference schedule.

“We’ve seen everyone once and the kids have been able to make their transition, too,” Wassum said. “Skill wise, I believe we played last year in the 6B and that was arguably one of the better conferences in the state and one of the toughest districts. That was evident when Anaconda, who was ranked 5th in our district, ended up finishing second in the state after their loss to Malta.”

Wassum said he felt he and his Chiefs are ready for seeing their opponents the second time around.

“Being in the Northwest, it’s exciting to see everyone and I am excited to play the second time around,” Wassum said. “We were 3-2 coming out of the front end of our confernce schedule and that Polson double overtime game was unbelievably crazy. We struggled against the Pirates down the stretch. We had a couple of injuries and that really took away our momentum. We missed a bunch of free throws. Our kids are excited to be sitting where we are at sitting tied for second in the conference with Polson.”

Wassum expects his team to play with “frenetic energy.”

“We are getting there and we are so close,” Wassum said. “ I don’t want to say that we are there yet because we still have a long way to go and not a long time to get there. In a month, we will start the tournament and we want to do some really good things. We still have a lot of work to continue to get better.”

Wassum knows getting out of his game on top in the Western A District Tournament will not be easy.

“It’s going to be a really good District tournament,” Wassum said. “Everyone is now at the halfway mark in our conference play and anyone can beat anyone on any given night. It doesn’t matter who you are playing because it’s always going to be a competitive match up. There are quite a few overtime games in this conference and we’ve already played in two of them. Those games that come down to the wire that is what makes it fun.”