GSL's Rogers rolls past Medical Lake boys 74-50

The Medical Lake boy’s basketball team picked the wrong opponent to try to knock the rust off their wheels prior to the resumption of league play following a two-week hiatus.

Upstart and speedy Rogers from the Greater Spokane League used fast starts both to open the game and the second half, and cruised to a humbling 74-50 nonleague victory over the Cardinals last Saturday at Medical Lake.

“Coming off break we were kinda’ out of sync,” Medical Lake head coach Arnold Brown said.

The Cardinals (3-0 Northeast A, 5-2 overall), had won five straight contests but fell behind to the running and gunning league-leading Pirates (6-1 GSL, 7-2 overall) who raced to an early big lead and never had to truly worry.

“The first quarter didn’t start out really great,” Brown said. “(The) second quarter was OK, (but) our defense wasn’t up to par.”

After trailing 11-0 to open the game, Jaelon Stith got the Cardinals on the board and on the way to scoring a game-high 24 points by hitting a free throw.

“We missed our first five layups, we got the ball inside where we wanted to be (but) we just missed those,” Brown said. “That’s not the kind of team you want to dig a hole (against).”

Brown saw his team being a little shell-shocked that first quarter and “Then we woke up,” he said. “Obviously they woke up in the third quarter.”

And while Medical Lake would cut the margin to as few as three points a number of times in the opening half, the Pirates would always find answers.

Leading just 24-21 with 5 minutes, 5 seconds to play in the second quarter, Rogers would add distance with mini-runs and lead 40-31 at the break.

Then came the disastrous third quarter where once again Rogers had offensive answers while Medical Lake had none. The Pirates, who were led by Robert Rucker’s 17 points and the double-double (12 points and 15 rebounds) from Melik Hampton, went on a 12-1 run and upped their lead to 52-34.

“No excuses, they handed it to us,” Brown said.

Dylan Rushfeldt was the other Cardinal in double figures with 10 points. But the Pirates put the clamps on Medical Lake’s top producers, Tellas Johnson (two points) and Cory Wagner (six points). For the game the Cardinals shot just 33 percent from the field and 16 percent from 3-point range, going just 2 for 12.

“Tellas didn’t have a very good game,” Brown said of his senior leading scorer who was coming off vacation and totally away from basketball. “Obviously him, Dante (Brown) and Cory (Wagner) getting 11 points, we’re not going to beat too many people with that happening.”

Brown praised the job former Cheney head coach Joel Soter is doing in his second season on the job at Rogers. “That’s probably one of their better groups and Joel’s doing a good job.”

For the Cardinals, who had league games at home versus Colville (1-2, 1-7) this past Tuesday and are on the road at Newport (1-2, 6-3) Saturday, the takeaway was finding out where they needed to improve.

“Any type of nonleague game, we test our weaknesses,” Brown said. “Obviously they let us know where we were weak.”

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].