The Titans never seemed comfortable in their 54-46 home loss to Madison on Tuesday.
Offensively they struggled to find and maintain any sort of rhythm and defensively, the Southern Coffey County boys failed to lock down on a smaller Madison team that came into the game as losers of their last three outings.
Combine both and the Titans, who drop to 5-4 and 3-4 this season, found a lot more Jekyll than Hyde in a season thats been up and down all year.
We can win a game by 40 or lose one by 30, head coach Jay Applegate said. Weve done both this year and thats a pretty wide discrepancy. But were going to work to get better.
The Titans started in a hole. Poor shooting combined with two early technicals for not having the score book filled out correctly gave Madison an 11-2 start.
Anytime you fall behind early thats bad, obviously, Applegate said. Even though we broke it down to five a couple of times we couldnt maintain rhythm and making good decisions with the ball. We kept rushing things. But in the first five, six minutes, we didnt look like we knew what we were doing and thats probably my fault.
Those struggles continued throughout the quarter and gave the Titans a 20-8 deficit by the end of it thanks in part to sloppy play and bad ball handling.
We had way too many turnovers, Applegate said. Our guards just dont do a good job handling the ball. We make bad passes and we make poor decisions. When we dont do that, were a pretty good team but when you dont, tonight happens.
Things started to turn favorably in the second quarter as SCC cut the Madison lead back under double-digits and all of the way to six at halftime.
Senior Dawson Leimkuhler scored 10 of his team-leading 23 points in that stretch after fighting through some early double-teams by Madison. Things seemed to be heading toward a full comeback.
It really was just as simple as us taking care of the basketball, Applegate said. We get impatient and we dont look for opportunites. Our strength is our inside game even though we have a couple kids who can hit a three every now and again but we dont have the patience to work and wait for that. We want to hit the home run now and thats just a bad mindset for basketball.
The Madison lead got as small as four when both teams took the court again in the second half. But when things seemed to be in control and heading toward a possible Titan victory, the turnovers and sloppy play reared their heads once again as the Bulldogs pushed their lead back to 10 by the end of third quarter.
Madison held serve in the final minutes, not allowing their lead to dip below 10 until sophomore Nathan Borntreger hit a three, his lone basket of the night, with 15 seconds left to play.
Senior Kolgan Ohl had 13 in the loss followed by seven for senior Jett Harvey.
The Titans will try to bounce back when they travel to Lebo on Friday.
