By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

STAYTON, Ore.–   Tuesday night, the Stayton Eagles Men’s Basketball team took some well deserved time off from basketball activities and did some team bonding stuff admist a long season and the important to get the kids away from the sport for sometime.

Now back to work, and faced with an uphill-climb as is entering Friday’s game with Yamhill-Cartlon, sitting in a three-way tie with Cascade and Newport at 3-3 in the OWC Standings, Kiser has his team focus on the big picture with the hopes of finishing second in league.

“Right now, if we drop to (Yamhill-Carlton) we’re going to be fighting to get even a play-in situation so we have four games left in league,” said Eagles Head Coach Joe Kiser.  “We understand that three of those are at home and we can’t hold anything back.

“We need to get three of those four, that’s our coaches goal is to get three of those four games.”

From a players perspective, Matt Lindemann knows the importance of the situation they are in at the moment.

“We’ve kind of had a tough start to the beginning of the season and our goal is to win league,” started Lindemann.  “Just by everyone, seeing how our league goes, is up for grabs all the time.  People are getting upset.

“It’s very important for us to finish off strong and get more wins out of the season.”

The main issue with the Eagles was their ability to put two halves together, but as Lindemann explained, they might’ve found that recipe for success versus Newport on Friday.

“Our success at Newport started in the second half,” he said. “We actually put a full game together, we saw how successful we were at that so if we put that to every game, it’ll be very important to get all of our wins.”

With the Tigers awaiting to start this final hurrah for the playoffs, the final countdown is on.

The Eagles know what they need to do to make their dreams of a playoff berth happen and Kyle Schwarm summed it up perfectly.

“Come together as a team, play good and win,” he said.

REMIANING SCHEDULE

2/12     Vs. Yamhill-Carlton  7pm

2/16     @ North Marion       7pm

2/19     vs. Cascade                7pm

2/23     vs. Philomath             7pm

Jeremy McDonald is a professional sports journalist in the Salem/Portland area and is a member of the Society of Professional Journalist in Oregon with B.S. degrees from Southern Oregon University in Journalism (2011) and Health/PE (2013).  Got a story idea? Email him at jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com or on Twitter at @J_McDonald81!