Broncos’ season concludes at District Tournament

After suffering a 48-45 loss to the St. George’s Dragon the Lind-Ritzville/Sprague Broncos faced the Colfax Bulldogs in a battle for fifth place and the last berth into the Sub-Regional Tournament.

Head coach Dustan Arlt said the fact the Broncos were playing against a team that went 18-2 during the regular season spoke to how difficult the league competition was this year.

The Broncos got off to a good start against the Bulldogs and at the end of the first quarter both teams were tied at 11.

The second quarter started to go even more in the favor of the Broncos as they took a 22-17 lead with minutes remaining in the quarter.

However, Arlt said the Broncos’ effort began to lag with the team missing a few easy looks at the hoop.

“That’s when it kind of started to fall apart,” Arlt explained. “And I kind of felt it coming”

Arlt said the Broncos missed seven potential points on offense at a crucial moment in the game, which gave the Bulldogs an opening.

The Bulldogs managed to rally back against the Broncos and took a 26-22 lead at the halftime buzzer.

Despite trying to rally his team during the break, Arlt said the Broncos’ performance continued to lag. The Bulldogs extended their lead to 45-30 over the Broncos in the third quarter.

In the fourth the Broncos tried to battle back and closed the Bulldog lead to just six points, however a foul called on a rebound attempt by Cort Ruzicka swung the momentum back into the Bulldog’s favor.

They closed the game 59-50 over the Broncos taking the fifth place seed into the Sub-Regional Tournament and eliminating the Broncos.

Ruzicka finished his final game of the season with a career high 27 points against the Bulldogs. Matt Leffel added another six points for the Broncos along with his consistent play and intensity. Dallas Killian was another leading scorer for the Broncos, also with six points.

Ruzicka and Leffel performed well for the Broncos all season, Arlt said.

“Him [Ruzicka] and Matt both I think, I’m probably the most pleased with those two and their seasons,” Arlt said. “Just because I felt like I knew what I was going to get game in game out.”

With the season concluded Arlt began his reflections on the season just completed.

“We don’t handle adversity well as far as, we’re even less patient, we try to do things that just compounds bad situations to make them even worse,” he explained

Arlt said the league was tough this year, but he had anticipated the team would be among the top competitors.

“Before the year I didn’t think we were there but at the end of the year we were probably the sixth best team,” Arlt said. “Just our inconsistency and lack of enough guys stepping up to score.”

The Broncos struggled with shooting throughout the season according to Arlt and it showed during the tournament game against Colfax. The top scorers, Ruzicka and Leffel, were 14 for 18 from the field.

The rest of the team was 5-32.

“Outside of Cort and Matt we really had trouble putting the ball in the hole against Colfax,” Arlt said.

He explained the challenge for next year will be building up this years juniors to play and finding a team identity without a player to fill in at the post.

A bright point for the Broncos was their defense, Arlt said. Even with the low shooting percentages the Broncos held their opponents to close games and forced the competition each night.

“We’ll rethink some stuff there are some things we’ve got to do to get more intensity out of these kids,” Arlt explained.