YC

showed during Tuesday’s home loss. During that weekend tournament YC beat Havasu 60-55.

There wasn’t a lot of fluidity on offense and the Shamrocks, who like to get out and run, were held in a half-court slugfest.

“We’re loose with the ball. We’re not finishing,” YC coach Bret Felsenthal said. “I saw that all throughout the weekend and it continued today. I think with practice time it will hopefully improve. We also just have to get used to playing together. We don’t have the camaraderie down as a team

yet. I have to do a better job figuring out what’s going to work for this team.”

Most of the transition points that they scored came early in the game as they jumped out to a 9-0 lead after three layups from junior Rakai Malone and an elbow-three from senior Randal Voutt.

Malone had 10 points in the game and Voutt had 15 points and nine rebounds.

After going up 9-0 in the first five minutes, lids were put on the baskets. YC led 13-5 to finish the first quarter, but it would only score once in the second quarter, often faltering or forcing bad shots in half-court sets. The Shamrocks shot 30 percent

from the field and had 16 turnovers.

At one point Havasu went on a 37-13 run spanning about two whole quarters. A lot of that was predicated on YC’s inability to take care of the ball with scoring droughts of six minutes and five minutes to turn a lead into a big deficit.

The Knights took their biggest lead of the game with three minutes left in the third quarter after a contested layup from senior Noah Boyd at 37-22.

Going down 15 gave YC some energy and they rallied back with an 8-0 run of their own to stay in the game. That run was spearheaded by Voutt’s ability to get to the basket and the line in transition. They pulled back in at 37-30, but they would stay at around that margin down the stretch, trading baskets until the final, 54-45 loss.

“I think that’s an advantage we have with the athleticism we have on this team,” Felsenthal said. “We have to get stops before we can run and that’s something that we struggled with tonight. We struggled rebounding tonight too. When you give a team second and third chances, over and over again, they are going to put the ball in. Then, you can’t run until you get it.”