Things didn’t go exactly as they’d hoped as the Ballenas Whalers senior boys basketball team dropped a 73-40 decision to the NDSS (Nanaimo) Islanders on Seniors Night Tuesday.
The Whalers, who’d previously lost to NDSS — the Islanders scored more than 100 points that day — managed to hold their leading scorer, Tyus Barfoot, to just 22 points but couldn’t manage to find their way when it came to putting the ball in the basket.
“It was a tough game offensively for us,” coach Taylor Wilson said following the game. “We just couldn’t hit a shot, plain and simple. We played pretty well against Tyus, he didn’t have near as good a game as he did the first time out against us earlier this year but we just had troubles with our scoring.”
It wasn’t pretty for the Whalers, who had a season low two points in the first quarter against the Islanders, but were only down 11.
“It was just a bad offensive game, that’s it,” Wilson said. “We needed to make more shots and we couldn’t. It’s sort of been that way for us all season, we’ll put together two real good games and then we fall off and have two real bad games. It’s interesting, from a coaching stand point, to see what’s going to come when they step out onto the floor when it’s game time.”
Prior to Tuesday, the Whalers had an exhibition game against B.C. Christian School (Vancouver) which saw them come away with a one–point victory, after trailing and struggling against a swarming defense.
“They came at us like a bunch of bees defending their hive. Iit was a shock for them,” Wilson said. “We ended up being down and had to come back and luckily for us, that’s what we did. We managed to come away with the one-point win but it was a tough game. We saw a lot of in-your-face pressure and it hurt us for a bit but luckily we found our bearings and got back in it.”
The Whalers will now look ahead to a game tonight (Thursday) in Campbell River against Carihi to see if they will move on to the North Islands, and ultimately the Islands, at the AAA level.
A win will see the Whalers move on.
But first the Whalers need to get past Carihi and with one practice before the game, Wilson knows they need to come prepared tonight.
“We need to come out ready to play basketball,” Wilson said.
“We can’t have another Jekyll and Hyde game, we need to play our tough, physical brand of basketball that we know we can play.”
“If we can dictate the pace and use our strength, we should be able to get the win.”