The young Raider boys’ basketball team entered the winter break at 2-4 with the hopes that they could turn that around at their home tournament. The Raiders host a four-team tournament over the winter break called the Holiday Tournament. This year, the three visiting teams were Prescott, Irondale and St Louis Park.

Day one saw Hastings vs Irondale and Prescott vs St. Louis Park. Prescott cruised to a 95-82 victory, sending St. Louis Park to the consolation bracket. Two of the Cardinals broke the 30point threshold for the game.

Hastings took on Irondale in the first game, struggling early and often, falling 82-45.

“You know, we've had a lot of competitive games this year against some pretty good teams,” explained Head Coach Chad Feikema. “Big Lake is still undefeated, and we lost to them by five. We had a double figure lead in the second half against Woodbury and lost by three, Hudson is 6-1 or 7-1 and we had a lead second half and lost by six or seven. We have had some competitive games. We have had two games where things fell apart fast, and the Irondale game was one of those. We didn't get defensive stops early, we got back in the game, I think it was 9-8 and then we gave up a 15-0 run. During that run we got one shot off, we turned it over too much. We just made a lot of mistakes and didn't take care of the basketball. We did not play with enough intensity on the defensive end and when things started spiraling in the wrong direction, we weren't mentally tough enough in that game to respond. Basketball is a game of runs. We didn’t respond to the run and things fell apart.

In watching the Raiders during the second game, it appeared as though the boys were thinking about running the designed plays from the playbook, but quickly changed to ad-libbing their way around the floor. The deviation from the called offense seemed to affect the scoreboard more and more as the game went on.

Prescott defeated Irondale 65-64 in the championship to win the tournament.

During the Raiders against St. Louis Park, when SLP would go on a run, Hastings countered, until the last portion of the first half. The Raiders went to the locker room down 36-27. That is when Coach Feikema really challenged his players.

“The second half was kind of fun,” Feikema said. “We changed the rotation a little bit and had a couple of guys give us some energy. I told our guys we need to find out who is going to compete. It was interesting in the second half that you only found a couple of guys that really went out and competed. Some of the minutes, changed a little bit and we will see where it goes from here. I thought Weston Schult did a nice job at point guard and we were able to move on and off the ball a little and get our offense running a little better. We got deeper into the possession some and that is something that still needs to get better. Max Albertson and Kyan Esterbee really gave us some energy on the front end defensively and some of the guys behind them responded a little bit. We have to grow with that a little bit. Some guys will have to compete more, it is all part of us learning how to play at this level. There is a level of effort, energy, discipline and concentration that we are still trying to achieve, and we do not play a very experienced crew. We play a lot of young guys, so there is a learning curve.”

The youth of Hastings is clear with three seniors on the roster. Only one of those seniors starts consistently, the other two come off the bench as role players, the rest of the roster is made up of underclassmen. The Raiders are also a smaller team, with the tallest on the roster being Evan Koenigs at six feet four inches. The bulk of the team hovers around the six-foot one inch area or less.

“We need to get deeper into offensive possessions,” explained Feikema. “We will enter our offense and the initial action will take place. If we don't get a shot off the initial action, we need to go to a second action and too often we bail on it. If we don't get the first action, somebody will jack up a contested shot. We have a shot selection scale, it's four through nine, with nine being the best, nine is the layup. Eight is we got something that got us to the free throw line. A seven is a catch and shoot uncontested three. So, from the field goal perspective, we want sevens, eights or nines and too often will take hard looks off the dribble. Those are fours and fives, and we don't want to take those. We give up after the first action instead of getting deeper into the possession and trying to get a seven or an eight.”

Feikema emphasized the need to be patient and disciplined in the half court. The goal is broken down into phases. The first phase is scoring in the first six or seven seconds from crossing into the offensive zone. If that does not happen, they want to set up and take the time to score after 17 seconds.

The Raiders won the second half of the game again, outscoring SLP 37-32, but it was not enough to win the game. Hastings fell 68-64 to finish fourth in their Holiday Tournament.

Owen Bernatz led the scoring for Hastings again, scoring 36 for the tournament and Peyton Lee-Dean had 23 points for the tournament.

“I feel like I learned a lot about our guys today,” said Feikema. “On one hand, we have what we see in practice, and then the other hand for some of the guys, it's not transferring to games. So, you know, everything is on the table at this point, and it'll be interesting to see where it goes from here.”

Things return to normal for the Raiders with St. Thomas Academy coming to town on Jan 3 at 7:00 p.m. and then two road trips. The first stop is Tartan on January 5th at 7:00 p.m. and then a 5:00 p.m. game at Northfield on the seventh. January 10th, North St. Paul comes to town for a 7:00 p.m. tip.

Kelvin Maher is one of three seniors on the Raider roster and the only regular senior starter. Maher often has the role of leading the offense down the court for defensive inbound plays. Here he makes a three-point shot. Photo by Bruce Karnick