HTC BOYS HOOPS

West Burlington upends HTC boys

Falcons' pressure too much for the Crusaders to handle

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FORT MADISON - Holy Trinity’s boys basketball team didn’t win a game in the opening week of the season, but the Crusaders learned some valuable lessons.
Friday’s 74-51 loss to West Burlington at Shottenkirk Gym was a reminder to the Crusaders that they need more consistency.
The Crusaders fell to 0-3 overall, 0-2 in the SEI Superconference South Division.
Holy Trinity was without forward Nick Fullenkamp, the lone senior on the team. And it showed against the Falcons, whose swarming defense early set the Crusaders back.
“I think what I learned the most this week is there’s a lot of upside potential to this team,” Holy Trinity coach John Hellige said. “There are flashes when this team … I just stand back and kind of say, ‘Wow.’ But I also realized that, like tonight, we didn’t have a senior guy in uniform. And it showed at times.”
West Burlington (2-0, 2-0) sprinted to a 22-9 first-quarter lead behind a pressure defense that the Crusaders had a hard time handling.
“It would have been good to have Nick’s physicality out there,” Hellige said of Fullenkamp, who missed the game because of illness. “They were really overplaying us and I think that got to us a little bit. We just weren’t ready for that kind of physicality in the guard play.”
Holy Trinity got to within 29-22 with 3:47 left in the first half before the Falcons went on a 9-3 run to close the half, with all of their points in that stretch coming from 3-pointers from Braden Martin.
A 21-12 third quarter by the Falcons put the game away. They led by as much as 32 points in the fourth quarter.
Luke Hellige led Holy Trinity with 24 points. Layne Rung had 11.
Holy Trinity’s Conner Gehling, who averaged 16 points in the first two games of the week, had just seven in this game.
“He’s such a great leaper, we’d like to see him overpower kids and jump over them versus trying to get a little fancy with the spin move,” John Hellige said. “He can be very effective with all of that.”
Martin had 25 points. Parker Lau had 13.

Holy Trinity Catholic, boys, basketball, Crusaders, West Burlington, Falcons, sports, Pen City Current, varsity, Southeast Iowa Superconference

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