Petersburg High School hosted a basketball tournament last week, which was attended by teams from all across the state. The varsity Vikings soundly won all of their games. The Lady Vikings lost all of their games — but by a narrow margin. They came up just a few points behind their opponents in each game, and their coaches said both teams are feeling satisfied with the progress they made this weekend.
Petersburg’s varsity basketball players have about a month left in their season, and both of their coaches remarked on their progress over the last week. Rick Brock, who coaches the boys’ teams, said he noticed improvement in his players’ half-court defense right off the bat. In Thursday’s game against Klawock, he said he saw the varsity Vikings put immense pressure on the Chieftains.
“[It was] a great way to start the tournament,” said Brock. We got really good balanced scoring, we ended up with four guys and double figures, and then another one through an eight. So, it’s good to see us play so well as a team.”
They won that game 76-to-45 — their best game of the weekend. They went on to win Friday’s game against Juneau’s Thunder Mountain 66-to-40; and Saturday’s game against Susitna Valley from Talkeetna 43-to-27.
Brock said he also saw his younger players step up this weekend.
“I think that JV tournament two weeks ago really helped them,” said Brock. “They finished the tournament by playing well against Sitka and then they finished the tournament by beating Skagway, and I felt that really kind of catapulted us forward in this tournament for the sophomores and juniors to play better in the varsity games.”
The Lady Vikings had a harder time on the court this weekend. They narrowly lost all four of their games. They had to fit two games into both days they played — Thursday and Saturday. Matt Pawuk, who coaches the Lady Vikings, said the double days were an interesting challenge.
“There’s really no quit in that group,” said Pawuk. “Both days that we played, we actually had to play two games in one day, which is pretty unusual for basketball. But it was a really good challenge for us. I think it’ll kind of battle-test us a little bit for regionals, because regionals you might have to play a 9 a.m. game, and you got to be up and ready to go.”
Their first game was with the Klawock Lady Chieftains on Thursday afternoon. Klawock won that game 28-to-25. Then the Susitna Valley Lady Rams won 39-to-35 on Thursday evening.
But they pushed through their exhaustion on Saturday and played some of their closest games of the tournament. On Saturday morning, the Klawock Lady Chieftains won 29-to-37. And the last game of the tournament was the Lady Vikings’ best — on Saturday evening, during their rematch with the Lady Rams, the Petersburg girls lost by just one point. The final score: 29-to-28.
Pawuk said he saw a lot of improvement this weekend, but also some areas where he thinks his players can improve.
“…Like our free throw shooting,” said Pawuk. “That was a big topic this weekend for us and this week in practice. And the nice thing is, that is absolutely something that we can improve upon before the end of the year.”
Pawuk said he’s pleased that he saw his players scoring evenly all throughout the tournament.
“That’s the thing I love about this team: it’s pretty unusual for us to have a single one standout player,” said Pawuk. “It’s the team aspect of this group. There’s no one player on our team that anybody has to focus on stopping that one player and we’ll be successful because we can have any one of our really our top nine players kind of take a step up and be the leader for the game, and it wouldn’t surprise me.”
Looking ahead, both coaches say their players are in for a challenge this week, which is when they’re scheduled to play the Metlakatla Chiefs on their home turf. The Chiefs are one of the top-ranked teams in the state, and they’ve won every game they’ve played against Petersburg this season. But Rick Brock said, win or lose, the Vikings will grow from this experience.
“It’ll be a great test for us,” said Brock. “We’ll see where we stack up in the conference or all the games around the league. You can see that games are getting a little tighter — Wrangell just beat Metlakatla for their first loss and conference this last weekend, so I’m excited to go down and see where we’re at.”
KFSK will broadcast those games with Metlakatla live.
