WINNEMUCCA - With the playoffs just a few weeks away, the Lowry High School varsity boys basketball team is looking at a much bigger picture than the Division I-A matchup it had with Spring Creek on Tuesday night in Winnemucca.
The Buckaroos made easy work of the Spartans, winning 75-49 and entertaining the crowd with dunk and dunk attempts in the third period.
"I hate to win by 26 points and be negative," said LHS head coach Chad Peters. "It's not about Spring Creek. I could care less how much we beat them by. I want to get better. There were times where we were good and times we were worse. We have work to do. There is a much bigger goal in front of us. We have to make sure that we take what we do in practice and apply it to games."
Lowry allowed Spring Creek just 14 points in the first half, but once the game got out of control, the Spartans made the game more up tempo, notching 35-second-half points.
"I didn't like the way we played defense in the second half," Peters said. "We were taking one step and slapping at the ball instead of taking two steps and taking a charge. We have to fix that. That part of our defense is horrible. It's the easy way out."
Lowry (13-4 overall, 7-1 Division I-A, 2-1 Ruby Mountain) scored six of the first seven points of the game and never trailed. Spring Creek closed within a point at 6-5, but it was all Buckaroos after that.
Lowry's Chris Dendary and Josh Watterson started an 11-0 run to close out the first quarter, pushing the advantage to 17-5. The Buckaroos added 13 of the first 15 points of the second period to finish off a 24-2 spurt and blow the game open at 30-7.
"I felt we did a nice job of running our motion offense," Peters said. "We got some easy layups and good looks and got some good minutes with some guys."
Josh Shaver added six points in the third quarter, including a dunk on a fast break, while Calvin Connors hit a 3-point field goal for his only points of the night to make the score 42-16.
Connors and Watterson attempted to set up another dunk midway through the third period, where Connors threw the ball of the backboard. However, Watterson couldn't finish off the slam. Moments later, Watterson brought the gym to its feet with a dunk to give the Buckaroos their largest lead of the night at 53-22.
Spring Creek answered with seven consecutive points to close the gap to 24 points, but the margin never dropped below 20 points.
"We had fun in the third quarter with the dunks," added the coach. "But we can't get caught up in that and have to get back and play defense. We let Spring Creek set the tempo in the second half and got caught up in its game."
Watterson and Nate Eldodt led Lowry with 13 and 10 points, respectively. Dusty Bryan added nine, Tytus Millikan and Shaver eight, Tyler Brumm seven, Garrett Naveran six and Connors and Dendary three each.
Lowry travels to White Pine tonight for a 7:30 p.m. tipoff and moves over to West Wendover on Saturday for a 3:30 p.m. start. The Buckaroos are back on the road to face Elko at 7:30 p.m.
"We have two big road games coming up," Peters said. "We have to be ready to play. We will see if we have gotten any better when we go to Elko."
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