“In our past few games, we’ve been disconnected and haven’t been moving the ball well. We just hadn’t been ourselves, but this game, I think we really bounced back – we played connected,” Bearcats junior guard Caden Cunningham said. “We moved the ball really well, I think the communication was way better and we just wanted to be there for each other.”
Like the Ladycats in the game before them, the Bearcats showed great continuity and effort on both sides of the ball, and the result was a convincing victory. In the end, Aledo defeated Fossil Ridge by a final score of 84-48.
“It was very impressive tonight, it really was. The guys did a great job,” Bearcats head coach Andrew Baker said. “We just got back to kind of who we are. We played a lot of games with tournaments and had little practice time. So, coming back from the break, being fresh and then getting some really good practice in – it showed on the court tonight.”
Cunningham, who led his team with a game-high 25 points, had 12 points in the first half that helped the home team Bearcats build a 37-18 advantage at intermission. Many of Aledo’s buckets came on transition opportunities or second chances. In the first quarter, senior forward Townes Van Huysen collected two blocks before leaking out for a transition dunk while guards like Cunningham and Enrique Pacheco were able to get a head start for easy buckets on many transition opportunities. The key to engineering this style of basketball? Effort on defense.
“That’s our standard 100 percent on defense. We’re talking, we’re flying around – we are everywhere all over the court,” Cunningham said. “I think we just need to keep being ourselves while having each others’ backs. We know who we can be, we just have to stay connected, stay consistent and stack productive days.”
“At the end of the day, our most basic stuff is just our man-to-man defense, and the intensity and toughness that we want to have in that goes with our identity as a team,” Baker said. “We want to continue to move the ball really well to be hard to guard, and I think we saw both of those things tonight. It’s never about the score, it’s about the habits. Our focus was on building good, winning habits more than anything else.”
While the game was largely decided for most of the 32 minutes, Aledo did not let the score of the game affect its intensity, energy or effort. Throughout, players were talking to each other on the court while Baker was keeping the intensity on the sidelines – continuously challenging his players to be great in each moment.
“We have a really competitive team and our next-man mentality feeds the competitiveness,” Baker said. “You have to compete, you have to bring your A game because, if not, somebody is there over your shoulder, and creating a competitive gym helps that. We don’t just want to repeat as district champions, we want to see if we can go win in the playoffs. That’s our mindset and mentality, and we’re just trying to get back into a good rhythm.”
Along with Cunningham’s game-high 25 points, Pacheco poured in 21 while Van Huysen netted eight. Crew Bates had six points while Josiah Jenkins and Pipkins each scored five.
The Bearcats (16-6, 2-0) will play again at 8 p.m. Friday at Saginaw.
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