Mavs' season ends in 3C Tourney

The season ended for the North Country Mavericks as the team fell to the Dodson Coyotes 58-50 in the District 3C consolation finals on Saturday, February 16, in Wolf Point.

The Mavericks defeated the Nashua Porcupines 56-45 in the opening round of the District 3C Tourney, on Thursday, February 14. The team would go on to lose 69-16 to the Scobey Spartans in the semi-finals on Friday, February 15, who eventually took out Lustre Christian for the 3C title on Saturday, February 16.

After their loss to Scobey, the Mavericks defeated the Frazer Bearcubs 71-29 in the consolation semi-finals last Saturday morning for the right to take on Dodson in the consolation finals.

“They have some good kids there (Frazer) but they are young and our speed kind of gets ahead of them a little bit,” Coach Ellsworth said. “We also shot well so that’s the score ended up that way.

In North Country’s win over Nashua, the Mavericks were led by Ty Murphy who had 21 points. Jesse Lee and Loden Idler both added ten points to the effort. Beau Simonson had five points. Jon Rey Taylor and John McColly each had four points.

“We just took care of business when we needed to,” McColly said. “When things got rough. We didn’t give up and we had a couple of things go our way and got the motivation.”

Murphy, who had experienced foul trouble throughout several games this season, picked up his first foul in the fourth quarter, giving him plenty of time on the court.

“I started off the year and I wasn’t doing so hot on the fouls and I had a lot of people talk to me, reminding me that there are a little of younger kids watching and they are looking up to us. It was good to calm down and when you calm down, you play better and I have been playing pretty good.”

Nashua had the lead throughout the game, and North Country was finally able to gain their first lead with only a few minutes remaining in the third quarter.

“They were hitting their shots and they have a lot of upperclassmen that are experienced and came to play at tournaments,” McColly said. “That is one thing that our younger team had trouble with in the first half, but we are on a roll now.”

Dustin Ostrom led the team’s effort in their loss to Scobey the next day, scoring a team-leading seven points. Cordell Younkin had four points. Simonson had three points. Murphy and Brady Albus had two points each.

“If it didn’t look good after one quarter, I was taking them out and saving them to win the next game,” Coach Ellsworth said. “That was our plan and that’s what we did. The rest of the kids played three quarters of the game.”

In the Maverick’s blowout win over Frazer the next morning, the Mavericks were led by Ostrom and Idler who both had 12 points. Lee added 11.

In their loss to the Coyotes, Taylor led all scorers with 18 points. Lee had 13 points. Murphy had eight points. Idler had five points. Simonson had four points and McColly had two points.

“We got off to a good start and had a good lead, but we couldn’t hang on to it,” Coach Ellsworth said.

The Mavericks gained an early lead over the Coyotes, going up 28-12 in the opening minutes of the second quarter.

“We had a couple of kids knock down a whole bunch of threes in the first quarter, so that’s how we got the lead,” Coach Ellsworth said. “Then they got out of their zone and started pressing us all over the place and we didn’t handle that really well.”

Dodson would go on a 21-7 run in the second quarter to close the gap. The halftime score was 33-32 in favor of the Coyotes. The Coyotes would ride the momentum to win the game.

“We made some really bad mistakes down the stretch,” Coach Ellsworth said. “It was really close until we got to the point where we had started fouling and then they got some free throws at the end.”