Peninsula boys hoops drops two in Sterling Christmas Shootout
The slow start to the season continued for the Peninsula boys basketball team in the Sterling Christmas Shootout at Kennedy Catholic High School, with the Seahawks losing two of three games.
The team faced Kentwood first and lost 73-49, then lost 76-52 to Lindbergh. The Seahawks closed out the tournament with a 59-50 win over Chief Sealth.
Coach Matt Robles is looking to learn from the weekend and how they can improve.
“Kentwood and Lindbergh are very athletic so we had trouble taking care of the ball,” Robles said. “That’s been one of our weaknesses so far this year. If we can continue to get better at taking care of the ball and rebounding, I think we’ll be just fine.”
Robles spoke to the struggles the team had against strong competition when they had players out sick.
“We played hard. We played good competition,” Robles said. “We had some guys that were sick so we called up some JV guys. We had a lot of sophomores that got some good experience and played pretty well.”
Senior Kaleb Lichau echoed how the first couple games were a struggle but highlighted how the team bounced back for the third game. “The first two games were rough. They pressured us a lot,” Lichau said. “But the third game we played a good basketball game. We handled the pressure, we executed, and that’s why we won.”
Peninsula (2-7) has struggled to adjust to pressure defense so far this season. That trend continued during the holiday tournament.
“Both teams pressured us full court with traps. Our guards just struggled against the pressure,” Lichau said. “We just didn’t execute. We didn’t run the press break really well and once we did, we started getting whatever we wanted. It was just too late.”
Lichau, a senior and recent commit to the Air Force Academy, battled through his illness to help his team.
“I’ve been sick for two weeks now. Two of our bigs are sick. I think we’ve had like five guys sick. It’s crazy,” Lichau said. “I’ve had a cold. I think I had the flu at one point. I played four games while I was sick too so that probably didn’t help.”
Even with being sick, his coach praised his performance in the team’s sole win.
“Kaleb had a good final game. He poured 20 points in the final game,” Robles said. “He had a nice way to end the weekend.”
Lichau also had a standout play that resulted in a dunk which the team hopes is a sign of good things to come in the rest of the season for him as well as the team.
“The sky’s the limit with that kid. He had a nice put back dunk on a missed shot,” Robles said. “He was going up and grabbing rebounds above the rim. When he’s doing that, he is really tough to guard and tough to stop. He’s been doing a great job with that this year and I can’t wait to see what he’ll bring to these next couple games.”
Lichau talked through that play and how he was just following up a rebound from a teammate he had set up for a 3-pointer.“That was cool,” Lichau said. “They were running their zone. They switched into like a 3-2 zone. I just had the ball in the middle, kicked it out to the corner, Roman (Bockhorn) took a three and missed it. I just followed.”
Looking ahead, the team is hoping that this trial by fire of high-pressure games will help them moving forward.
“We learned a lot. We know we’re going to face a lot of pressure especially with teams coming up in our first week of league games in January,” Robles said.
Lichau is hoping that the team will get back to basics and build off their final win in the tournament.
“I think that we just need to play our game and play slow,” Lichau said. “Focusing on ball fakes, not turning the ball over, and just not pushing the ball. Not making the flashy play. Making the simple plays. I think we did a really good job with that in the last game.”
This story was originally published January 2, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
