Panthers beat Speedboys in low-scoring contest

By JASON JUNO

sports@yourdailyglobe.com

Bessemer — Rivals Ewen-Trout Creek and Bessemer can usually be counted on for some pretty entertaining matchups, whether it’s in the district tournament, or for positioning in the league.

Tuesday night was not one of those games.

The Panthers were nevertheless happy to take the 43-33 low-scoring win.

“Anytime you can win on the road when you’re not scoring it worth a darn is good,” E-TC coach Brad Besonen said.

Both teams are battling injuries. Bessemer missed Leland Hollenbeck, who should return after Christmas from his ankle injury. E-TC was without Chase Goll in another physical game (also an ankle injury), and Caden Besonen’s ankle injury from football kept him from being as good as usual on the defensive end and in transition.

Neither team has found a groove offensively at this point. E-TC saw a zone for the second time and struggled a bit in the half-court offense. Outside shots didn’t fall and they didn’t get it into Thomas Logghe enough. Young Bessemer only played its third game, which turned out to be their lowest scoring of them all.

“The guys did a good job of defending and causing enough chaos,” Besonen said. “I think we sped them up a bit with the presses, and even though we didn’t get a whole bunch of steals, we made them take some bad shots and we forced a couple travels in there and did get some deflections.”

Bessemer coach Richard Matrella thought his team handled the press well at times, but agreed that it sped them up at times as well. They have guards and size and some of their bigs are good passers, so E-TC wasn’t causing the full-on panic it’s capable of.

Had Bessemer been able to shoot better, the issues they did have with the press wouldn’t have mattered that much.

“When you can’t make a shot, not a whole lot you can do,” Matrella said. “We had open shots. We got to the rim, we did stuff we wanted to do. At some point, maybe a few of them will start to drop.”

They didn’t early. E-TC led 10-1 with the Speedboys finally getting their first field goal with 1.5 seconds left in the first quarter on a Cayden Harju take to the hoop.

Just 11 seconds into the second quarter, Bessemer got their second field goal, on a layup by Devin Carlson. In all, the Speedboys scored 10 straight for an 11-10 lead.

But that advantage was short lived as the Panthers retook the lead and went into halftime with a 23-16 advantage after Brody Majurin hit a 3 at the buzzer.

The Panther lead increased to 10, 33-23, by the end of the third quarter and it never went under that in the fourth quarter.

There were bright spots for the Panthers. Austin Gordon finished with 24 points. Caden Besonen helped out playing the point against the zone despite being limited in his usual game. And they won.

Matrella wasn’t bothered by Gordon’s performance.

“He ends up with 20 all the time,” he said. “He does a good job getting to the free throw line, he gets shots outside, he attacks the basket.

“Gordon’s a tough guard because he’s a good athlete and when he goes, he goes hard. He passes more this year, which is a good attribute for him to have because he’s going to experience — as you get into the other half of the year, he’s going to draw box-and-ones and double teams. People are going to say somebody else has to score. He’s a tough player. Brad’s got a nice team again.”

Like E-TC, the Speedboys figure to get better as they play more games and get healthier. They created some problems for E-TC with their rebounding in the first half and got some good shots.

“At the end of the night, they scored 40-some points, our problem was we barely got to 30,” Matrella said.

Chalk it up to an early-season game.

“It’ll probably be less ugly when we play them again next time,” Matrella said of the Feb. 18 matchup.

Fingers crossed.

E-TC (3-3) heads to Ontonagon Thursday while Bessemer (0-3) goes to Hurley on Jan. 3.

E-TC — Caden Besonen 2, Cameron Logghe 4, Brody Majurin 3, Austin Gordon 24, Thomas Logghe 10. FTs: 11-19. Fouls: 12. Fouled out: None. 3-pointers: Gordon 1, Majurin 1.

Bessemer — CJay Wainio 3, Cayden Harju 7, Jayden Verrett 9, Connor Johnson 2, Gus Matrella 3, Ben Kaurala 4, Aiden Partanen 1, Devin Carlson 4. FTs: 3-9. Fouls: 21. Fouled out: Partanen. 3-pointers: Wainio 1, Harju 1, Verrett 1, Matrella 1.

E-TC 10 23 33 43

Bessemer 3 16 23 33