Turning the Corner

The Hanna, Elk Mountain, Medicine Bow (HEM) Miner High School basketball team played two games this week, winning the first against Rock River on Friday and losing the second to Guernsey-Sunrise.

The Miners opened up a lead early in the first game against the Longhorns and through most of the game kept it. 

"I thought the boys, overall as a team did well executing the plan we had going in," Cliff Jones, head coach of the Miners said." We knew that for us to be successful, we needed to limit their shots in the paint. We also knew we had to attack the paint."

Kyler Proffitt did exactly that. "I think it was evident Kyler was doing this by getting to the free throw line as many times as he did," Jones said. "He did a nice job of getting by the guards and then pulling up to that mid-reach and pulling those big kids out to him, which is what we wanted because it allowed for offensive rebounding."

Jones said the team had executed what they had gone over in practice.

"I thought that Royal Olsen did a great job," Jones said. "We tasked Royal with basically guarding the 6' 7" (Johnny Moore) player. He pestered him and pestered him. Then Cody (Priest) and Rayce (Ward) did a good job, when he was on the block and after a while he (Moore) got tired of being double teamed at the post, so he took his shots at the three point line."

Jones said Moore still scored from a distance, but shutting down his scoring from the inside helped the Miners tremendously.

"He still scored five 3-pointers, but he doesn't shoot as high a percentage of that shot as he does from the inside," Jones said. "So we were willing to give him that to keep from scoring inside the paint."

The Miners won against the Longhorns 55 to 49.

The Guernsey-Sunrise Vikings gave the Miners a loss on Saturday. The score was 54 to 39.

"They have some really good guards," Jones said. "They have a kid that is 6' 6" inside who is a true post player. He shot no further than 12 feet away from the basket and then they had guards who could shoot threes. They made 11 three pointers. It was sort of pick your poison. Did you concentrate efforts on the boy who was an excellent post player or the guards who were scoring from a distance?  We contested a lot of the 3-pointers."

Jones said Hayden Antencio had a good game on Saturday with his scoring. The one facet of the Miners game Jones is hoping for improvement, is having other players score consistently besides Proffitt and Atencio.

"Our scoring isn't quite balanced enough," Jones said. "Friday night, Kyler had 33 points and Hayden had 18 and Saturday Hayden had 22 points out of our 39. Our scoring isn't balanced enough to where we have multiple threats out there."

Jones does feel the team played good basketball this weekend.

"We played better basketball this weekend and you can kind of see we are turning the corner, both defensively and offensively," Jones said. "Our guys are starting to understand their roles and now we have to take them out of their comfort zone and push them as we move forward."

The next game for the Miners is against Farson-Eden at home.