Coeur d’Alene guards just a couple of pests for opponents

It’s easy to think you’re seeing double when you see guards Andrew Prohaska and Nate Clinton at the front of the Coeur d’Alene High boys basketball team’s full-court pressure.

A referee may have said it best.

“When they’re on the court, it’s like Coeur d’Alene has seven players on the floor,” the veteran ref said.

Indeed. Prohaska and Clinton, both juniors, aren’t twins, but they might as well be. They’re definitely two peas in the same pod.

They have a simple mission: They want to cause opponents as much frustration as possible.

“One thing they do for us is they play so hard and provide so much energy, especially in our press and man-to-man defenses,” CdA coach Kent Leiss said. “It motivates the rest of the team to play hard, too.”

“We have to play like that,” Prohaska said. “It’s kind of an unwritten rule that we have to pick up the tempo, set the speed, at the front of the press.”

Leiss countered that he demands hard play from all of his players, not just his pesky defensive stalwarts. Of the two, Prohaska definitely plays with much more reckless aggression – so much so that he picked up two quick fouls in the first Inland Empire League game against crosstown rival Lake City. Prohaska ended up playing a season-low 10 minutes before fouling out.

“I was too amped up for that game,” Prohaska said. “I didn’t adjust to the refs.”

“You have to play good defense without fouling,” Clinton said

They’re the two shortest players in CdA’s all-guard lineup. Their heights, as listed on the team’s roster, are greatly exaggerated.

A reporter brought a measuring tape to practice to verify their heights. Prohaska, listed as 5-foot-10 on the roster, measured 5-8; Clinton, listed at 5-9 on the roster, is 5-7. Neither could explain the discrepancy. Neither could their coach because he said the listed heights of the other players are accurate.

“We’ve been telling Clinton ever since his freshman year that he’s ‘5-foot nothing,’ ” Leiss said.

The duo have a little of the short-person attitude, too. To an extent they try to make up for their lack of height with intimidation – more so Prohaska than Clinton.

“He (Prohaska) helps set the tone maybe even a little more than Clinton,” Leiss said. “Clinton is a better all-around player because he shoots the basketball better.”

Despite being the team’s second-shortest player on the court, Prohaska leads CdA in rebounding. Not so astonishing is he also leads the team in steals.

Prohaska plays with the attitude that any loose ball belongs to him. He had a satisfying and season-high 11 rebounds in a telling 82-65 win over Flathead of Kalispell, Mont., last month. Flathead is lead by 6-8 sophomore Brock Osweiler, who has given Gonzaga University an early oral commitment.

“He outworks everybody and goes and gets the ball,” Leiss said of Prohaska. “That’s nothing I’ve taught him. He just has a motor in him that doesn’t quit. He wants to dominate the guy he’s guarding.”

Leiss doesn’t know if Prohaska ever tires.

Many times Prohaska’s biggest asset, aggression, can also be his downfall.

“It’s difficult to coach him in a way at times,” Leiss said. “He’s aggressive, he gets the loose balls and he’s good at getting fouled and going to the foul line. But in our first game at Gillette (Wyo.), he missed his first five free throws. So you’re disappointed, but then you realize that those are probably free throws we wouldn’t have shot anyway had Prohaska not gotten the steals or the rebounds.”

CdA needed a big fourth-quarter rally to stop upset-minded Lake City 55-54.

“The fourth quarter is how we should have played the whole game,” Clinton said.

Prohaska and Clinton are good friends today. But before they reached high school, they were enemies.

“We used to hate each other,” Prohaska said. “We played on different AAU teams and we’d guard each other.”

They both lived in LC’s district boundaries, but they made independent decisions to attend CdA.

They were among five freshmen who were elevated to the junior varsity. They started together that season, and they quickly developed a friendship.

Leiss assigns Prohaska to guard opponents’ point guards.

“He’s everywhere,” Leiss said. “One second he’s on your left side and the next he’s on your right side. It seems like he can be in two places at the same time. I don’t know how he does it. It’s totally instinct.”

Leiss said many times as a coach he gets caught up in the heat of the game and that he doesn’t notice all the interactive things that go on between players. He knows Prohaska isn’t a favorite of opponents.

“I know he’s sneaky at times,” Leiss said. “We were playing West Valley and I took him out of the game. I noticed (their fans) were mad at him. I said, ‘Andrew, why is everybody so mad?’ He rubbed his messy hair and gave me this innocent Eddie Haskell look. He said, ‘I don’t know Coach.’

“I would absolutely hate to play against him. It would be a nightmare going against him.”

Together, Prohaska and Clinton are causing many nightmares.