Final Score: Cascade 79 Stayton 52
God bless Garrett Callsen. Without him cleaning up the boards, this would’ve been over before halftime.
Cascade, when allowed to isolate one-on-one in the half court offensively, is almost unstoppable. It didn’t matter if it was Landon Knox, either of the Horne twins, or Rogue Newton, if a Stayton defender was left on an island it was over. The only respite, the only saving grace for Stayton on the defensive end was shots that rimmed out and found their way into Garret Callsen’s hands, that was it. Offensively the Eagles couldn’t maintain possession of the ball, couldn’t produce quality looks, and couldn’t create enough second chance opportunities to make up for either of those shortcomings. Cascade played phenomenally defensively–with those components, essentially being able to press with five guards, or four guards and athletic freak Anthony Best it’s really hard to NOT play well defensively–but nonetheless the Stayton mishaps is what created the 27 point final margin, which somehow in the flow of things felt worse than the scoreboard showed.
Stayton has components to be competitive at a high level, but there’s clearly a lot of ground to be covered if winning a game at Forest Grove is to be in the cards.
