Collegiate rebounds from first loss, beats Circle

Four days after Collegiate’s first loss, boys coach Mitch Fiegel remained fixated on the measly four assists his team managed at Andale on Friday.

“Four assists? I didn’t even know it was possible to do that,” Fiegel said.

Tuesday night he insisted his team share the basketball. He urged them to make an extra pass every possession.

Collegiate had 13 assists as it defeated visiting Circle 79-66 to improve to 7-1 overall, 4-1 in AV-CTL IV. Circle is 6-2, 3-2.

“Thirteen assists is still on the low end of where we want to be,” Fiegel said. “But in the first half, for about 13 minutes, we were really good. Then for about three minutes, it stuck again. We’ve got to share the ball.

“… We haven’t played with that purpose and passion that I thought we would. I thought we saw a glimmer of that tonight in the first half.”

Through the first 13:40, Collegiate was stellar as it built a 52-34 lead. During that span, the Spartans shot 18 of 36 from the field, nine of 11 players scored and they outrebounded Circle 25-15.

“In the first half we were happy with the way we came out,” Collegiate senior Cameron Christian said. “We haven’t done that in a while. We came out with a lot of energy. We hustled. We shared the basketball. We played defense.”

Collegiate senior Austin Waddell added: “We didn’t really do that against Andale, and that’s why we we came out on the bottom half of that. Came out with the loss.”

Collegiate finished with a 38-25 rebounding margin and made 28 of 56 field goals.

Waddell, who missed 10 days with a hip injury, finished with a game-high 20 points, scoring 16 in the first half. Christian added 18 points, and each had five rebounds.

They were strong in the lane scoring on putbacks, but also driving inside and muscling past defenders.

Collegiate used four players who are 6-foot-4 or taller, including Andrew Murphy, who had six rebounds. Cooper Root added four.

“They throw a lot of big bodies at you, and we didn’t have enough to guard them,” Circle coach Bo Horyna said. “… They were very physical, did a good job on the boards.”

Circle countered with a zone defense in the second half. While Collegiate didn’t match its first-half output, the Spartans still shot 9 of 17 in the second half.

Circle took advantage of 11 second-half Collegiate turnovers, and mounted a comeback. Cody Eastridge scored to get the Thunderbirds within 70-59 with 6:48 to go, but Collegiate’s Jack Larsen hit one of his two three-pointers.

The Thunderbirds used a fastbreak basket by Mark Walthers, a jumper from Cal Hartley and a Cameron Parr three to get back within 77-66 with 2:40 to go. Hartley scored a game-high 21 points and had a team-high six rebounds.

“We got within 11 a couple times, but part of the problem was it was so up and down in the first half, that we just didn’t have our legs maybe like we normally would have,” Horyna said.

This story was originally published January 12, 2016 at 11:08 PM with the headline "Collegiate rebounds from first loss, beats Circle."