WELLSVILLE — Iola’s 72-47 loss to Wellsville has an easy and a hard explanation.
The easy: The Mustangs got into foul trouble early and allowed Wellsville to hit 14 threes.
The hard is going to take a little more than a sentence to work out.
To start off the game, the Eagles were hitting a 3 a minute for the first four minutes. Meanwhile, it seemed that any kind of maneuver by either team on the low blocks was being called for a foul.
Wellsville junior Zach Vance was on a tear, hitting eight total 3s (six in the first half) on his way to 28 points.
“He’s a good shooter,” Iola head coach Luke Bycroft said. “He’s been playing varsity since he was a freshmen. He hasn’t hurt us as bad in the past. He was hitting some tough shots from a long way out. Our guys were right in his face but we were getting out there and getting our hand up. But we were just a step slow.”
The sharp shooting from Wellsville combined with Iola’s inability to get into a consistent offensive rhythm, thanks in part to the deluge of fouls, saw the Mustangs get behind by double-digits quick.
And while the Mustangs had some success early getting it to their bigs (senior Ethan Holloway ended the night with a team-high 20 points and five fouls and senior Evan Sigg had 17 and 3 fouls) once fouls started to pile up, the Mustangs’ aggression diminished.
“The foul trouble hurt us,” Bycroft said. “We were getting the ball inside at will until we got our bigs in fouls trouble. Then we were a little more careful with our moves and we didn’t go inside as much. It changed the flow of the first half a lot.”
To make matters worse, Iola continued to struggle to rebound, allowing Wellsville — a team with only two players taller than 6 foot — to dominate.
“We gave up way too many offensive rebounds tonight,” Bycroft said. “For us to dominate we have to be the rebounding team we should be. With our size and physicality we should be a great rebounding team and we’re not. We’re an average one. Tonight we only had 28 against a small team.”
As the Mustangs stumbled into the locker room down 42-25 at the half with 16 fouls (it was 28 total) Bycroft was committed to sticking his guns, hoping the Mustang defense would find its stride and minimize on both the 3s and the fouls.
When the Mustangs emerged from the second half, Vance quickly popped another 3 to put Wellsville up by more than 20. Bycroft decided changes needed to be made.
“It was one of those things were you have to decide, is the value in doing something different just for a game to try to win or is there more value in trying to get better at how we want to play defense,” Bycroft said. “I’m a stubborn guy. I wanted to do what we want to do. If the season was on the line, that’s a change that I’ll make sooner.”
From there, things improved, and while Iola didn’t get the deficit any smaller than 15, the Mustangs were making plays and looked much more like themselves. However it was too little, too late.
The Mustangs fall to 5-3 and 2-3 in Pioneer League play. They’ll play Sabetha in the opening round of the Burlington Tounrament.
