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Show Wasatch unravels Miner defense en route to a lopsided b-ball win i ,M.IIW f " j Jeff Keye passes off before making his cut to the basket. by JIM SMEDLEY Record staff writer The Miners ran into a Wasps nest on defense and were stung 62-38 by Wasatch before the largest crowd of the season Jan. 3 at the Park City High School gym. After trailing by 6 points at the end of the first quarter, things steadily grew worse for the Miners as the hot-shooting and defense-minded Wasps gradually pulled away to a 13-point lead in the second quarter. The Miners could get no closer than 1 1 points during the rest of the game. The loss dropped the Miners to 3-4 overall and 1-4 in 2-A basketball play. Wasatch improved to 5-4 overall and 3-2 in the league. The defense that led to Park City's demise was a 2-2-1 zone, which has been successful for head coach Bill Farr. He said his team has held North Summit, South Summit and Morgan to under 50 points this season. "It works well when the opposition doesn't have a big man they can get the ball inside to," said Coach Farr. "Our two guards played very aggressively ag-gressively outside and we packed the middle with our bigger players." The Miners rarely got a second shot at the basket. They were outre-bounded outre-bounded 45-30 by the Wasps and shot 36 percent from the field a percentage percen-tage that hardly leads to victories. Meanwhile, the Wasps snapped the nets at a 50 percent rate from the field and shot 75 percent from the foul line. Their 12 turnovers were nine fewer than the Miners committed. commit-ted. "One of our biggest problems is that we have no consistency in our Wasatch feasted on the inside. They hit five of nine shots in the key in the first half and were seven for 12 in the second half. Sophomores Kam Christensen and Jeff Davis did a job on the boards for the Wasps. The 6-foot-2 Christensen also led his team in scoring with 19 points and the 6-foot-4 Davis had 6 points. Senior Mark Lister was the second-leading scorer with 14 points. "Kam has actually been holding back all year. He was playing with seniors and didn't want to shoot a lot," Coach Farr said. "Well, he got excited tonight and executed and shot well." Greg King led the Miners in scoring scor-ing with 12 points. Bruce Buckner, Keye and Brett Peretti were next high for Park City, adding 6 points apiece. Peretti did his damage at the foul line, where he was perfect on four attempts. Wasatch ran off seven consecutive points to begin the second quarter to lead Park City 17-4. The Miners only scored 4 points in the first quarter on hoops by King and Clint Weaver. They were able to play even with Wasatch for the rest of the period and finished down 29-16. Park City traded baskets with Wasatch for about the first five minutes of the third quarter. But a bucket by King at 3:20 was to be the last they scored in that frame. They turned the ball over on three consecutive con-secutive possessions and took a couple cou-ple of low percentage shots on their others. While the Miners were having problems, pro-blems, Christensen hit three field goals and Lister added two to push the Wasp lead to 45-24. After Wasatch shot out to a 51-24 leacC Farr pulled four of his starters and let the second squad finish the game. Farr said that watching the Miners' junior varsity play gave him a clue as to how to attack the Miners' 2-3 and 2-1-2 zones. He said he noticed notic-ed that the JVs played the zone "up" (from the baseline). He instructed his inside players to look for the baseline drive and work to get behind the zone. They were successful suc-cessful and as a result controlled the boards and got many rebound buckets. "Not to make an excuse or an alibi, our team didn't have a full practice over the holidays. We never had fewer than six people missing with colds or the flu," Willard said. "We knew we would have to play very well against Wasatch to win because they are a good team. However, I don't think they are 20 points better than us." Indeed the Miners were flat. Scott Tatum and Keye were sick and Tatum only could play about five minutes of the entire game. Peretti, Todd Mullen and Weaver had missed miss-ed practice days due to illness. The only completely healthy players Willard had were King and Buckner. "King played hard. I finally pulled him with two minutes to go in the game. He was spent," Willard said. "He gave his everything and tried to , be an inspirational, as well as physical, leader. It was one of his better efforts." Willard also said Mullen did a decent de-cent job against the Wasps. Mullen, the leading offensive rebounder for the Miners, grabbed six boards and had 6 points while playing a limited amount of time for Park City. Park City will host Union Jan. 10 and then travel to Morgan Jan. 11 to take on the Trojans. Each JV game will begin at 5:30 p.m. and the varsity varsi-ty starts at7:30. shooting. We have a different high scorer each game. Out of our players who have shot 40 or more times during the season, Jeff Keye leads in field goal percentage with 39," said Miner head coach Paul Willard. "What really hurt us is that we're missing the close-in shots the shots we work to get . "In the first half, 16 of the 25 shots we took were within the key and we only made five of them," Willard added. ad-ded. "In the second half, only 10 of our 27 shots were within the key." |