By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

SALEM, Ore.– The Regis Boys Basketball team just brought the heat and kept it dialed up against Blanchet Catholic Tuesday night on the road, defeating the Cavailers 73-61 in the process.  And the biggest point of interest, the momentum swing, came in the second quarter in what was neck-to-neck game coming out the first frame.

Leading 17-15, with Blanchet’s Daniel Maza and the Rams Isaiah Koehnke scoring what seemed like every point in the first eight minutes, Regis’ exploded in the second eight minutes with a 20-8 frame to build some separation between the two squads.  Taking full advantage of the lull that Blanchet had went into to take a 37-23 lead into the locker room and into the second half.  Something that good to see points Koehnke, but is something they need to continue to do for a full 32 minutes.

“I thought it was a big quarter for us,” Koehnke said.  “It was a big momentum push the entire game, setting the tone, we need to continue to work on that the whole entire game.  We’re getting closer to where we want to be, we’re not all the way there yet but it’s signs of improvement with us for us to get to where we want to go.”

The Cavs pulled it together in the second half, cutting the deficit to 43-33 midway through the third quarter, only to see Regis extinguished the rally and pushed their lead back out to 61-44 by the end of the third quarter.  An 8-2 run to start the fourth quarter gave Blanchet Catholic a chance at the 5:21 mark, but couldn’t overcome the deficit as frustrations of being so close against these tough teams and coming out on the wrong side of them rear their ugly heads once more.  Drawing back from games like this one, Santiam last week, so on and so forth as they hope that with their remaining games ahead that they can piece together a quality win before league playoffs.

“We got tired and we lost a little bit of effort.  On the defensive end. we got tired and we couldn’t get stops.  That second half, we  could’ve lost by 20/30, but we kept battling and we lost by ten.  We still played hard and kept it close,” Blanchet’s  Carson Banning said. “We got to find a way to finish games against tough teams.  Find ways to get wins against really good teams. Honestly, putting in more effort and take better shots, take better shots.”

The Cavs head to Colton on Thursday before hosting Kennedy on Friday.  Regis host Chemawa in a non-league game on Thursday before traveling to Delphian on Friday.

Koehnke finished with 26 points, Diego Aguilar contributed another 18 points for the Rams.  Maza finished with 29 points for Blanchet and Banning finished with 14 points.

Photos By Jeremy McDonald