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Cougars still hunting
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DESPITE 3 -4 LEAGUE RECORD, CLACKAMAS BATTLES FOR PLAYOFF SPOT
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BY JACOB THOMPSON
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Tariq Harris
Clackamas Print
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SPORTS EDITOR @SPORTStDTHOMPS
After a hot start to the season in non-
conference play, 10-2, Clackam as
* Community College’ s men’ s basketball
team has lost three of their last four
games and now sits in fifth place in
t the south conference with a league
record of 3-4.
Clackamas took on first place
Lane Community College (16-2,
5-1) on Saturday. The Cougars/
looked primed to upset the No.
1 team as they took a 15 point
lead to the locker room dfter
the first half, leading 55-40.
Freshman post Matt O ’ Brien
led the Cougars in scoring with
17 points,, freshman guard Clay
Sullivan added 12 points and
Robert Ford added li.Clackam as
was shooting 48.7 percent from
O H
the field and went a perfect 9-9 at
the charity stripe.
“ We got off to a great start,” said
Head Coach Clif Wegner. “ We played a
very, very good first half. In the second half
we got into serious foul trouble.”
Clackamas had 12 team fouls in the fir s t;
half and three of their starters had two fouls
a piece.
Despite the foul trouble, the Cougars
extended their lead to 17 with a three-pointer
from freshman wing Tariq Harris with 135.02 left
to play. Clackamas led 70-53, but over the next five
minutes Lane outscored the Cougars 20-6 and pulled
back into the game 73~76.
Clackamas wasn’t able to stay out of foul trouble in
the second half as sophomore wing Adam Gherig, Harris
and freshman post Mathias Nchekwube all fouled out
of the game.
“ We’ve had a lot of foul trouble;” Harris said. “ I’ve
1 taken myself out of plenty games that I feel like if I was
■ S I I in, I could have made a big impact and we could’ve won. ”
Ford hit a„three with 8:16 remaining in the contest to
make it 79-73, but the momentum was going Lane’ s way.
“ They started pressing us and we turned it over way too
m uch,” Wegner said. “That was really the difference in
the ball game. We turned it over and it lead to some of their
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easy shots.”
Baskets were tradedfor the next three minutes, but a three
by Lane’s Tashon Brown narrowed Clackamas’ lead to 93-90.
A turnover by Ford and a layup by Brown made it 93-92 with
3:48 remaining.
Clackam as’ Jamie Stull made/a layup with 40 seconds
remaining, but the Titans answered with a three to tie
things at 99-99 with 20 seconds left. Stull had a layup
blocked by Brown with six seconds remaining. The Cougars
called a timeout to draw up the last play.
“ We had another chance to inbound it and we were trying
to get'the ball to Clay [Sullivan],” Wegner said. “A kid kind
of came through him over his back and it looked like a foul
to me, but they gave them the ball and a chance with two
seconds to go.”
Lane attempted a full-court pass for a shot to win it, the
ball was knocked away in the crowd, but Stull was called for a
personal foul that Sent Lane’ s Lucas Wilson to the free throw
line for a chance to win the game. Wilson missed the first,
but hit the second giving Lane a 100-99 lead with less than
two seconds left.
■Sullivan missed a desperation three and Lane was victorious.
“ At first we were pretty down [about the loss,]” sophomore
post Elliot Hesse said. “ When Coach [Wegner] talked, he
assured us that our effort was there. It wasn’t our effort that
“I’ve taken myself out o f plenty o f games
and I feel like if I was in, I could have
made a big impact and we could’ve won.’’
- Tariq Harris
lost us the game. We did almost everything in our control to
fight back against some poor calls there at the end.”
The win would have been big for the Cougars in the fight
for a playoff berth, but with more than half of the league
schedule still to be played, the Cougars are going back to the
drawing board to figure out what they need to do to get back
to the postseason.
“ Ourphilosophy is come out and fight like we did last game,”
Ford said; “We could go out and play hard arid get that top spot.
We have all the pieces, we just have toput them together.”
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Photo by Jonathan Villagomez
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theciackam asprint.com
January 30, 2019