Medical Lake boys tripped up by Chewelah, 47-45

See a photo gallery from the event here.

In their run towards a showdown with Freeman and a shot at earning a tie for first place in the Northeast A League, the Medical Lake boys' basketball team had a door abruptly slammed in their faces.

That happened on their home court last Friday night where in between wins at Riverside (3-7 NEA, 6-6 overall), 60-40 on Jan. 17 and 55-42 at Deer Park, the Cardinals were upset 47-45 last Friday by Chewelah (3-7, 6-8).

"You know, I don't know what happened there," head coach Noel Hachtel said. "They laid an egg on that."

The result left Medical Lake (8-2 , 12-4) trailing Freeman (10-0, 15-1) by two games with four remaining in the regular season and the state's top 1A RPI team, Freeman, coming to town Friday, Jan. 27 for a 7:30 p.m. game. Medical Lake is No. 10.

While he didn't have an idea why his team stumbled so badly versus the Cougars in the middle of a nice run - the Cards had won three straight league games following a Jan. 12 loss, 58-44 at Freeman - statistics painted the picture quite well.

If the game seemed to have a strange flow to it, Hachtel said it did, particularly on the offensive side of things. "We missed 13 layups and we missed 13 free throws," he said.

"We did what we wanted, what we set out to do," Hachtel said. "We wanted to get to the free throw line at least 24 times, and we got there 29, but we missed 13 of those."

That included Trenten Garza who scored 12 points. Garza, normally lights-out from the stripe, had two foul shots clank off the rim with 44.7 seconds to play with his team in the lead 46-45 and a chance to put the Cardinals up by three.

Nizhole Sherman led the Cardinals with 15 points against Chewelah, part of a week where he was held to eight against Riverside, but had a 13-point outing at Deer Park.

After Friday's stumble, and a stern talk from the coach, on Saturday at Deer Park, the Cardinals' offense exploded in the first quarter for 21 points - nearly half of their production for the entire game the previous night - and they led 37-26 at the break.

"The guys had spoiled me a little bit with the 11 wins and I had gotten away from the coaching," Hachtel said. "We just need to go back to having fun, let it all hang out like we're supposed to."

And it paid off.

Xavier Warmink-Butler joined Sherman with 13 points and Drew Hostetter added 10.

"In that game - and this is key for us - we moved Nick Mason, (a) 6-3 freshman, we decided to keep him varsity," Hachtel said. His length was the determining factor Saturday, Hachtel explained. "He made it difficult for other players to score, he got rebounds and a lot of steals, he always takes a good shot," he said.

Garza's 20 points and Butler's 16 led the way last Tuesday in the win at Riverside. Medical Lake put the game away with a 17-9 fourth-quarter edge.

"It was definitely the fourth quarter that put it away," Hachtel said. "We started slow (with) a bit of overconfidence."

Medical Lake began the week with a game at Newport (7-3, 10-6), Jan. 24 and following Freeman, will have two contests remaining.

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].

See a photo gallery from the event here.