Vikings fall shy of fourth place
CALDWELL, Idaho – Most of the season, the short-but-quick Coeur d’Alene High boys basketball team has posed matchup problems for the teams it has played.
Saturday morning, it was the Vikings with the matchup headaches.
Coeur d’Alene found a way to stay with Vallivue for three quarters. In the end, the Vikings couldn’t defend the Falcons’ balanced inside/outside attack Vallivue pulled away to a 69-56 win in the State 5A tournament consolation game for fourth place at Caldwell High School.
Three Falcons – athletically blessed junior point guard Will Bogan and sizeable senior posts Steve Anderson and Dennis Parry – combined for all but 10 of Vallivue’s points.
“I knew we were going to have trouble today,” said CdA coach Kent Leiss. “I didn’t think that we would have a chance if we tried to slow it down, because we really don’t have much of an inside game to speak of. We just had to hope that we could contain them, and we just didn’t quite do it enough.”
The game was tightly battled through the first 2 minutes of the fourth quarter. Through that point, there had been eight ties and 11 lead changes.
Nate Clinton put the Vikings (19-6) ahead for the last time at 49-48 when he made a 3-pointer with 6:24 to go.
Seconds later, the 6-foot-7 Anderson, who scored most of his points on short turnaround jumpers near or inside the key, stepped out to hit a 3-pointer that gave the lead back to Vallivue at 51-49. A layup by CdA’s Nate Bligh at the 5:14 mark tied the score a final time, at 51.
Vallivue (19-5) took the lead for good 36 seconds later on a basket that began an 18-5 finish.
The 6-0 Bogan, voted last week as the player of the year in the Southern Idaho Conference, was too much for even the athletic and speedy Vikings to control. Bogan finished with a game-high 28 points, making 10 of 16 shots from the field. He also had five rebounds and four steals.
“He’s the best player that I’ve seen all year,” Leiss said. “He deserves to be the player of the year in the SIC. I haven’t seen anybody better than him in the state. And he’s only a junior.”
CdA guard Calvin Peterson, who drew the assignment of guarding Bogan, matched height with the Falcon. But that’s all.
“Calvin did about as good a job as he possibly could trying to contain him,” Leiss said. “He stuck some long 3s. And the style of play that we play – that we have to play because of our lack of size trying to guard their big guys – we have to make it a frantic, open-floor game like that – and I think that’s what he (Bogan) just thrives in.”
Vallivue coach Mike Chatterton said teams have tried all sorts of things trying to contain Bogan. Most haven’t been successful.
“He’s obviously one of the better players in the state,” Chatterton said. “He did a nice job to get everybody else involved. We just fed off of his energy. People really try to stop him and try to control him. He just always steps up and rises to the challenge. It seems like the bigger the game the better he gets.”
Anderson and Parry supported Bogan with 19 and 12 points, respectively. Parry also had a team-high 13 rebounds, including five offensive boards – three of which he converted into putbacks.
Chatterton stressed that his team had to get back and defend against CdA’s quickness in transition.
“We just had to get back and defend,” said Chatterton, who switched frequently between man and a 2-3 zone. “Coeur d’Alene’s so quick and so fast. We just talked about defensive transition. There at the end of the game we went to 2-3 zone to try and defend the 3 and force tough shots. It just worked out for us.”
The Vikings missed eight straight 3-point attempts in a 4-minute stretch late in the fourth quarter before Clinton made one with 39 seconds remaining.
Bligh, who scored 25 and 35 points in CdA’s first two state games, got into foul trouble in the first half. He picked up his fourth 1:13 into the third quarter and sat the rest of the period. He played the entire final quarter, finishing with just nine points.
Clinton led with 13 points and Austin Heleker had 11 including a couple of key 3-pointers.
“It was 49-48 when Clinton hit a shot that put us ahead … and then I think we just got tired,” Leiss said. “We must have missed about eight or nine 3s in a row (eight). I think that comes from the fatigue. They were making shots earlier. I can’t fault our effort. Bogan was too good and their big guys were just too much to deal with. I don’t know how that team’s not playing somewhere else today. Those guys are pretty good.”