Cardinals Open The Season At Home

If you are any kind of a casual Soda Springs fan and you are wondering if it is worth your time to go to a boys basketball game this year let me assure you that it is.  Myself and many others are anticipating a very good year for the men of Soda Springs.  The Cardinals three headed monster in Cooper Thompson, Gavin Hansen, and Konner McWilliams have been playing varsity ball for Soda Springs for three years now.  Now as seniors playing in their final season you can believe that they are ready to make some noise this year.  The other starters for the Cardinals aren’t too shabby either.  Fellow senior Preston Ozburn provides another quick ball handler and shooter while Logan Mellor brings some length and size to the line up.  My own personal opinion is that the Cardinals should take care of their fifth district opponents and should only be challenged by Declo and Wendell for the district championship. In short the Cardinals are a very dangerous team that will cause several teams problems come tournament time.

Before we get too far ahead of ourselves there is a long season ahead of us and the Cardinals started their season last weekend with a pair of home games against two teams from the western side of the state.  Soda Springs first took on a very big and well coached New Plymouth team on Friday night.  That game got off to a bit of a slow start especially for the Cardinals.  In the first quarter of play the Cardinals only managed to put three points on the scoreboard.  Fortunately the Pilgrims didn’t do much better, only scoring seven in the opening period of play.  The scoring began to pick up in the second period fairly quickly.  Part way through the quarter the Cardinals managed to tie the score at twelve points a piece.  Unfortunately that would be the closest they would get for the remainder of the game.  The Pilgrims managed to stretch the lead back to five points at the halftime break.  Soda Springs battled hard in the third and kept things close but could not get over the five to six point deficit.  The fourth quarter was much the same.  The Pilgrims would try to pull away and the Cardinals would claw back into it but still could not get over the hump.  Some late game fouls allowed the Pilgrims to take the lead up to nine points and secure the win though the game felt much closer than that.  The big three from Soda Springs all managed to score in the game but didn’t get much help from anyone else.  The Cardinals will need to get more players involved in the scoring if they want to be successful through the season. 

Less than twenty-four hours after the disappointing opening loss the Cardinals were back on the court this time facing the Parma Panthers.  This time the Cardinals came out red hot and jumped all over the Panthers.  The nineteen first quarter points from the Cardinals was an improvement on the scoreboard but the fact that those points came from six different players was also a welcomed sight.  The Cardinals built up an eight point first quarter lead then continued to distance themselves in the second quarter.  By the halftime break the Cardinals seemed to be in complete control of the game now leading by sixteen points.  The Panthers however weren’t throwing in the towel yet.  Despite the Cardinals continuing to put up good numbers the Panthers came roaring back.  The sixteen point halftime lead was trimmed to eleven by the end of the third.  In the fourth quarter the Panthers put up an incredible twenty-five points very nearly completing the full comeback.  Mellor would earn six of his nine points in the final quarter which proved to be huge for Soda Springs as they were able to hang on for the two point victory.  

This week the Cardinals make the short trip to Bear Lake on Friday night to take on the Bears in a non conference battle.  That should be a fun game for Cardinal fans to attend.

Cardinals 3 14 12 13 42

Pilgrims 7 15 13 16 51

C. Thompson 22, G. Hansen 5, K. McWilliams 15

Cardinals 19 18 17 16 70

Panthers 11 10 22 25 68

K. Peterson 4, C. Thompson 6, G. Hansen 28, K. Harrison 4, K. McWilliams 16, L. Mellor 9, P. Ozburn 3