Bearcats lose season opener against Rams
By Mark Johnson
KCC 45 -Roseau 55
The Bearcats opened the 2021-22 basketball season with a North Border Conference game against the Roseau Rams in Lancaster last Thursday night. The two teams both had their sights set on getting an early edge in the conference race.
It wasn’t a good start for the Bearcats in the opening minutes of play. The Rams jumped out to an early 9-0 advantage on the backs of tempo and aggressive offensive rebounding. It took a good chunk of the first half for KCC to claw their way back from the early deficit. The Bearcats claimed a 23-22 lead late in the first half and had overcome the slow start. The Rams managed to get the last basket of the first half and held a 24-23 lead at the break.
The second half started out as a back-and-forth affair.
The teams exchanged baskets and turnovers, and neither team was able to build momentum or seize control of the contest. The turning point in the game came at the 13:02 mark in the second half. The Rams knocked down a 3-point basket and retained possession with an off-the-ball foul. The Bearcats responded with the next points of the game to close the Ram lead to 34-32 but would never get any closer than that as the Rams slowly pulled away and outscored the Bearcats 21-13 in the final 12 minutes of the game to hand KCC the 55-45 loss.
It was a good test for us right out of the gate. Roseau plays a physical game and we needed to be able to respond to it.
We did that in stretches of the game, but in the end their dominance on the glass led to second chance points.
Many of those points came on the free throw line after we committed fouls trying to recover after giving up an offensive rebound. We did a really good job of erasing the poor start, but just didn’t play with enough composure in the second half to tilt the game in our favor.
Scoring leaders: Morgan Turn 13, Cheyanne Scalese 11, Ella Olson 9, Aidra Johnson 6, Elsa Steen 4, Jenna Davis 2
Assist leaders: Jenna Davis 7, Morgan Turn 6
Rebound leaders: Jenna Davis 7, Ella Olson 4
