From the very start, the Anacortes boys basketball team ran a full court press against Squalicum. And from the very start until the end, the Storm had trouble working around it.
The Seahawks also got things done on the other side of the floor and Squalicum found itself in a deficit it couldn’t overcome in a 62-43 loss.
Anacortes’ aggressive defense forced Squalicum into tough shots all night and anytime the Storm hit a big shot, the Seahawks had an immediate answer.
Coming off a rivalry game against Sehome last week, maybe the Storm were simply tired, Squalicum senior Reed Richardson said.
“We had so much energy going into that, especially because they’re really good, we kind of came back and ran out of gas after going 180 miles per hour in the game before,” Richardson said.
One of Squalicum’s leading scorers, it took Richardson some time to get going in the game.
His first field goal didn’t come until the 2:40 mark of the second quarter when he hit a shot from deep.
It seemed like whoever had the ball for the Storm immediately drew a double-team from the Seahawks. This limited quality looks and prevented Squalicum from finding its spots.
By halftime, Anacortes had a 32-20 lead. Squalicum had no solutions in the second half.
Storm coach Tyler Hannigan said Anacortes’ style of defense sped his team up and they weren’t able to adjust.
“It’s hard to adjust when a team is knocking down their shots, too,” Hannigan said. “They made a lot of threes and that definitely got them going, but it’s just their aggressiveness. They play really good in the gaps and get a lot of deflections. We sped up, we didn’t slow down.”
Despite a down night for the offense overall, Richardson led the team with 11 points. Junior Ashton Engelhart scored nine, all from beyond the arc. Sophomore Peter Albert added seven.
Heading into the last game of the regular season and the district tournament next week, Richardson said it was good to get a bad loss out of their system now rather than in the postseason.
Squalicum dropped to 6-10 overall with the loss and 4-10 in the Northwest Conference.
Team chemistry isn’t the problem, Squalicum just needs to make that chemistry work in order to string together some wins.
“We do a bunch of little things well, but we just need to put them together,” Richardson said.
Squalicum will wrap up the regular season at home Thursday against Lakewood.
