Marmaton Valley boys, girls marauded by Vikings at home

Tuesday’s word of the day, brought to you by the head basketball coaches at Marmaton Valley High School: execution.

Here’s girls’ head coach Sherri Bagwell minutes after her team fell 36-27 to the Vikings of Northeast High: “We didn’t execute tonight. It goes back to what we needed to work on after that first game, which is — and I know I sound like a broken record — offensive and defensive execution. We just need to slow it down.”

Boys’ head coach Jason Bauer, whose squad was run over by the visiting Vikings, 72-46, was thumping the same drum: “We just didn’t execute early on and we dug ourselves a hole. When we slow things down and run through our offense and we don’t try to beat the press with the dribble, we’re a lot better.”

TO PICK UP on Bauer’s last point, Northeast’s 1-3-1 trap press did put the Cats in a bind at the start. Despite prepping his players for this exact species of full-court press, the Marmaton Valley boys were frequently cornered by the lanky Northeast defenders, which resulted in a number of ill-conceived Wildcat passes that ended up in the clutches of one or another streaking Vikings defender. Northeast would go on to score an uncomfortable number of its points off turnovers across the 32 minutes of play.

There’s this, too: in basketball, size matters. The Vikings’ four leading scorers on the evening stand six-five, six-three, six-two, and five-eleven. None of the Wildcats’ top scorers — Gage Griffith, 15 points; Alec Cochran, 12; Caiden Elliot, 7 — manages to crack six-foot.

“You’re going to hear me say this every week,” said Bauer. “We’re all five-ten but we’ve got to play like we’re six-two. And that starts with blocking out.”

Today’s practice, the Wildcats’ only one before tournament play resumes on Thursday, will be an exercise in rebounding and “ripping through.”

“When guys are up in our face,” said Bauer, “we’ve got to learn to rip through and go to the hole and not be scared.”

Bauer believes in his team’s capacity for toughness, and he knows — especially given the Wildcats’ modest physical prowess — that any path to victory they might find themselves on this season will be paved with the grit they’re able to summon on the defensive end. “I’ve told these guys all along,” said the coach, “we’re not going to win a 70-point game. We’ve got to win in the 40s and 50s.”

But a hard-nosed, defense-focused, grind-it-out contest on the order that Bauer is describing depends in large measure on his players’ physical courage, on their stepping in front of the opposing ball-handler as he careens toward the basket, on making their opponents run through them and not around.

“If we’d taken charges tonight, number three” — the stringy, athletic, six-three Vikings junior, who ruled the game at both ends of the court — “may have had to come out of the game,” reflected Bauer, “and that’s a difference maker. We’ve got to man up and stand in there and take it, and hope that that’s contagious.”

The Wildcats face the Madison Bulldogs in a dog versus cat contest at home on Thursday.

ON THE GIRLS’ side, the action was more nip and tuck. Despite the Vikings jumping out to an early 6-0 lead — on the strength of a pair of improbable threes — the Wildcats managed to shrink Northeast’s lead by the end of the first quarter, thanks largely to the long arms and soft hands of five-eleven senior, Patricia Outlan, who scored five of Marmaton Valley’s eight first-quarter points on a series of putbacks from the post.