McKenzie County Farmer - Sports

Titus Stenberg
Farmer Sports Writer

Watford City played their first Region 4 game of the season last Tuesday, and lost 62-38 at Beulah. The Wolves could not find an answer for Beulah junior, Braylen Schirado, who torched the nets for 30 points in 23 minutes played. Schirado finished 7-of-14 on three-pointers and a perfect 5-for-5 from the free throw line. He also led the Miners with five rebounds, three assists and three steals.
“The result was very disappointing,” said Watford City head coach, David Gumke. “We reverted back to individualistic play. Credit to Coach Schirado and his team for their pressure defense, which caused us to play hesitantly again and made it difficult to move the ball. According to the stats, we had 21 turnovers, not only caused by their very good defense, but also by our unforced errors. My comment to the team was that we did it to ourselves, and in more than just the turnovers.”
Watford City shot the ball well in the first half, but struggled with turnovers, many leading to easy baskets for Beulah. Meanwhile, Beulah took exceptionally good care of the ball, winning the turnover battle 21-3. The win was Beulah’s eighth in a row, and improved their Region 4 record to 1-0. The Wolves will play against New Town next before turning their attention to more Region 4 opponents.
“We better continue to work on handling pressure better,” said Coach Gumke. “We need to play as a team. We don’t have any individuals that can go out and score 30 to win a game for us. We have to play together and need to play nearly mistake-free basketball to give ourselves a chance to win games. We are not going to blow anyone out of the gym, especially in our region, which in my opinion is one of the tougher regions.”
Landon Vetter led Watford City with nine rebounds and Trysten DeVries pulled down eight. Carter Breitbach distributed three assists.
“We need to be better teammates,” concluded Coach Gumke. “When things don’t go well in a game, frustrations tend to come out. We need to be together like a family, win, lose or draw. The disappointing thing is that these are things that we have been battling with all season. From the outside looking in might appear that we are not doing anything to correct it, but trust me, we are addressing all of these issues every day. Now we have to step up our game as coaches to figure out what is going to make it work. We have excellent athletes that are capable of playing good basketball and we’re excited to get them to reach their full potential.”
                         1     2     3    4    Final
Watford City    9    8    6    15    38
Beulah            21  18  18     5     62
Watford City scoring: Thaydan Arnold 9; Dominic Latray 8; Trysten DeVries 7; Xavier McGorman 6; Sears Wiredu 4; Harper Moberg 2; Landon Vetter 2

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