Hope surprises Geneva

Frustrations boiled over for the Geneva boys basketball team following a 50-45 loss to Hope Wednesday at the 48th East Aurora Holiday Tournament.

Coach Phil Ralston thought his team was back on track after the first two games in the tournament, including a win over Walther Lutheran on Tuesday.

But a lackluster effort that saw the Vikings shoot 32 percent from the field and get outrebounded 34-20 against a Hope (11-5) team that had been 0-2 in the tournament left Ralston trying to figure out what happened.

“I don't have good answers for you now because I thought we had turned the corner, I thought we gave Peoria Central a battle for almost three full quarters (Monday) and I thought we played really well against Walther Lutheran,” Ralston said. “I just did not see the urgency to get a solid win today. I'm used to having kids that will battle and there was no urgency until the five-minute mark.”

Ralston was much calmer talking to reporters than the Vikings locker room a few minutes earlier. Assistant coach Rob Wicinski gave the team a fiery talk, probably better described as an old-fashioned chewing out while imploring the players to play with more passion.

“Usually we don't get too emotional but we needed it,” senior Marcus Stierwalt said. “We need to play with a little bit more passion. It's good. I think it's going to light a fire under us and we're going to come out tomorrow and our conference season and do it.”

Despite the loss, Geneva (6-9) advanced to the third-place game at 5:45 p.m. Thursday against Oswego East. The Vikings won the tiebreaker between 1-2 teams in their pool on fewest points allowed.

“We just really need to pick it up,” Stierwalt said. “We need to play better. We are playing teams we should be competing with and right now we're not. But there's still some season left so we're going to work on righting the ship and getting it done.”

Geneva's problems started early with a 4-point first quarter. The Vikings hit just 2 of 12 shots to fall behind 11-4.

Geneva took its only lead of the game at 4-2 on a backdoor cut by Brendan Leahy who scored on Brad Bernhard's assist. But those kind of high-percentage shots were hard to come by the rest of the way.

Taking too many outside shots disappointed Ralston, as did the team's effort getting back on defense.

“We knew what they could do and we didn't stop them from what they do,” Ralston said. “We said transition fastbreak you have to take away from this team and pretty much at no point in this game did we really do that. It's just thoroughly disappointing to see that we didn't have the resolve to take them away from what they wanted to do.”

Leading scorer Dan Trimble, after pouring in 28 points in Tuesday's win, scored just 2 points in the first half as the Vikings trailed 23-19 at halftime.

Torrance Johnson and Alex Houston scored all 9 of Hope's points in the third quarter for a 32-26 lead. The Eagles stretched the margin to 40-26 on three more baskets by the 6-foot-5 Johnson who finished with 24 points on 11-of-16 shooting.

“He probably had his best game all-around offensively and defensively,” Hope coach Mike Edwards said. “That's probably our team's best game start to finish this year. Today from the beginning to end they played pretty solid so I'm happy with that.”

The Vikings outscored the Eagles 19-8 over the final five minutes but never got close enough to have the ball and a chance to tie.

“You don't really see any urgency from anyone on our team until five minutes to go in the game,” Ralston said. “And by that time you are down 14 points and it's kind of hard to come back with that much time left on the clock.”

Stierwalt tied Trimble for Geneva scoring honors with 9 points, all on 3-pointers. He hit 3 of his 4 attempts from 3, Dan Hince was 2 of 6 and the rest of the team 1 of 12.

“Coach put me in a role on inbounds plays where I can contribute with my shooting and I shot the ball well today I guess,” Stierwalt said. “I got good passes from my teammates.”

Geneva will try to bounce back and take some momentum into 2011 against Oswego East, who defeated the Vikings 52-49 on Nov. 23.

“If we would have played the way we did yesterday we could have beaten this team soundly,” Ralston said. “We were too reliant on outside shots falling. It's not to take anything away from Hope, they are a good 1A team, but it's disappointing that you had the ability to get it done and we didn't do it.”