12/27/17: Duluth Denfeld @Cloquet

Varsity: L (74-77)

Pine City Pioneer, Jesse Logan

The Dragons boys basketball team headed to Cloquet for their holiday week tournament, and although the team went 0-2 while losing a pair of heart breakers, the squad played well. Both of Pine City’s opponents hailed from Class AAA, and both entered with winning records. Pine City is now 5-3 with all three losses coming against opponents from higher classes.

Duluth Denfeld 77, Pine City 74

This game saw the Dragons play their best basketball of the season to close out the first half and begin the second half. At one point trailing 34-27, Pine City would go on a 16-0 run. The play of the game was a buzzer-beater three by Seth Logan, who put the Dragons ahead 37-34 at the break. Pine City held a nine point lead with 8:33 to play, but was undone by a press applied by the Hunters.

“The Denfeld game was really the tale of two different teams for us,” said Dragons Coach Kyle Allen. “I thought we played great for three-fourths of the game. We executed our game plan, followed the scouting report, and really did a nice job in most aspects of what we are trying to do. Towards the end of the game, Denfeld put on a trapping, extended zone defense which we had talked about and prepared for. We did not execute well against it. I was really disappointed in how we tried to attack it. We had spent a lot of time game planning for that zone press and we did not do what we needed to do against it. We let their athleticism and length get the best of us.”

Pine City got 23 points on 9-12 shooting from Clay Logan, while Nick Hansmann put in 19 points and Seth Logan had 10.   

“It was great competition for us,” Coach Allen said of the Hunters, who had just beaten Duluth East the game before. “To play that kind of length and athleticism in a AAA team was a great challenge. Those are the types of games that get you ready for big pushes in the second half, that get you ready for playoff basketball.”

Played on Wednesday, Dec. 27, the game was the first of two for the Dragons up in Cloquet. The squad would stay in a hotel and spend the following day together as they had to wait for a 6:15 tip against the host lumberjacks. One had to wonder how the Dragons would respond after losing a heartbreaker and then spending the next 24 hours living out of a suitcase. Thankfully, the boys came ready to play the following day.