The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

MILTON-FREEWATER-Friday December 27th the Dayton-Waitsburg boys basketball team traveled to McLoughlin High School in Oregon for the first day of a holiday tournament. The boys would face Irrigon in the first round matchup. D-W quickly found themselves in a ten point deficit after Irrigon shot 8-16 from the field in the quarter. D-W shot only 5-14 in the first quarter and it ended with Irrigon leading 22-12.

Irrigon's hot hand would leave them in the second quarter as DW began to whittle away at the lead. #10 Mason Finney cut the lead to 24-18 with a jump shot. Moments later #34 Keon Lindsey scored with a nice up and under move to make it 24-20. #2 Colton VanBlaricom made his free throw to complete the three point play and tighten the score to 24-23. Irrigon would close out the quarter with two free throws to end the half ahead 26-23. All four of Irrigon's points in the quarter would come from free throws as they went 0-8 from the field.

In the 3rd quarter, Irrigon got hot again going 6-11 from the field as D-W picked a bad time to go cold. The boys would only put up six points in the quarter going 2-14 from the field. At the end of the quarter Irrigon was up 43-29.

Even though they were down fourteen points in the 4th they did not give up. You can see flashes with this team when they seem to know where their teammates are and the result is fun to watch. D-W would go on to score 23 points in the quarter but still fall short losing 59-52. In the end it wasn't field goal shooting that decided the game but free throw shooting. Irrigon would make 19-30 free throws to Dayton-Waitsburg's 10-17.

1st 2nd 3rd 4th Total

DW 12 11 6 23 52

Irrigon 22 4 17 16 59

Scoring

DW: Colton VanBlaricom 6, Sean Evans 5, Mason Finney 24, Wyatt Costello 6, Dylan Bledsoe 5, Tayven Seney 4, Keon Lindsey 2.

Irrigon: Ryan Hussey 2, John Cardenas 12, Felipe Flores 16, Rubin Moreno 18, Omar Madrigal 10, A. Madrigal 1.