Not the same Saints
By Kristi Nixon
HAMPTON — It’s a brand new year, and new Saint head boys’ basketball co-coaches Jason Squier and Eric Kline made it clear that this team is completely different.
That was evident as St. Ansgar stunned Hampton-Dumont by getting out to a fast start and then needing to rally for a 56-52 opening win over the Bulldogs on the road on Saturday, Dec. 3.
“That’s what we really stressed to them: new year, we’re going to play ball the way we need to play ball, and they battled,” Squier said. “That’s what we love about this group is they are very unselfish, they want to win ball games. Man, they really battled hard.”
Kline added, “I think the big thing going into this year is to change our mentality of St. Ansgar basketball. We want to be aggressive, we were unselfish, and we were mentally tough. That’s the thing that was impressive about tonight is our mental toughness being down however many points we were down, kept battling, kept believing. It was great.”
The Saints had first-year Bulldog head coach Brian Niesen calling timeout with 2 minutes, 30 seconds left in the first quarter as they led 11-5 and eventually took a 15-8 advantage into the second quarter. It was a punch in the mouth to a team that was predicted to win by 25 points.
“I don’t think so (that H-D was expecting the Saints’ quick start),” Squier said. “But they are a heck of a basketball team, they are a really good basketball team. They made that run, and that’s what we preached to the boys during the timeout, ‘Play our game.’ Then we chipped it down to five and doing what the boys could do. They are a very unselfish team, and that’s where we are lucky.”
The full story is available in the Dec. 7 print and e-edition of the Enterprise Journal.
