12/28/17: @Cloquet

Varsity: L (61-63)

Pine City Pioneer, Jesse Logan

Cloquet 63, Pine City 61

The Lumberjacks are a talented team with a tremendous size advantage over the Dragons. Early in the contest, it looked like the Dragons might fold as Cloquet jumped out to a double-digit lead. Pine City shot the ball well though and got significant contributions across the board to right the ship and make the game highly competitive. Pine City would have a chance to win or tie on the final possession, but would come up short.

“Cloquet is very physical and much more imposing than we are,” said Coach Allen. “I thought we did a nice job of staying focused in the moments of the game, not allowing anything to push us to high or too low. I really credit the boys for trying to dive themselves into the scouting report and execute it on the floor.”

Cloquet tried the same press as Denfeld had employed the day before, but the Dragons stepped up their effort and seemed to find an answer this time.

“We didn't make any major changes overnight,” added Allen. “The captains and I had talked about how we needed to better execute our sets against it and the boys followed the coaching that was given to them and it was not a major negative against us like it had been the night before. We had some guys really play well against Cloquet. Clay Logan really tried to ‘break the system’ in the game, working on all the phases of being a great basketball player. Was very impressed by how he came out. Our ‘tandem’ (Jake Lunceford and Quentin Miklya) did a nice job again doing what they do, locking up the opposing teams best player. Jake Rademacher, Seth Logan, and Damien Schwab drew the role of taking on Bryce Turnbull, who is a large and effective basketball player. They did a nice job holding him to nine points. In the end, we had our chances, but were unable to have the ball fall our way.”

After taking a timeout with 15.7 seconds left and down two, the Dragons final possession ended with a highly difficult baseline shot from Clay Logan that was unsuccessful. Even though the scoreboard had the Dragons on the losing end, the team could feel good about how they had competed.

“That is something we can live with when we go out there and give elite effort, execute the game plan positively, and play defense and rebound,” added Allen. 

Konnor Jusczak led the Dragons in scoring with 14 points while Clay Logan had 11. No other Dragons player was in double digits.

Pine City now has a busy three-game week with upcoming contests at Foley, versus Aitkin, and at North Branch.