Maybe the tone was set for the rest of the season in the District 1-3A boys opener in Bushland on Friday night or maybe it wasn’t, but it became clear that at least one player will be worth watching.
Neither Bushland nor Canadian put on an offensive clinic collectively in a game where a total of only eight players scored. So it was no surprise that Canadian emerged from the defensive slugfest with a 36-31 victory by having the player who scored the most of anyone.
Riggs Pennington put the rest of the Wildcats on his back with a game-high 26 points in a game where the teams seemed almost reluctant to score. Some of that may have been due to the rough and tumble nature of the natural athletic rivalry between the two schools, which is almost always hard-fought.
“This is always such a hard place to win,” said Canadian coach Brandon Wall of playing at Bushland. “If you’re lucky you can kind of steal one right there. That was a great win for our guys. They executed the game plan really well and it was an unbelievable game.”
Both teams struggled to put the ball in the basket in the opening minutes, but before the end of the quarter Pennington and Bushland sophomore Kiptyn Bidegain had found some rhythm. They both scored seven points in the opening quarter, and other than a free throw by Bushland’s Jenner King, provided all the points as Bushland led 8-7 at the end of the first quarter.
The Falcons led 12-9, but after that the Wildcats (10-5, 1-0 in district) three straight 3-pointers to go up 18-12 and never trailed again. Ironically, Pennington wasn’t the only part of that, as Brooks Wall and Rogelio Valenzuela followed with threes.
Canadian led 20-15 at halftime and the tone was set. Other than Pennington, the only Wildcat to scored from the floor after the barrage of threes was Jet Cervantes, who scored on a drive to the basket for a key bucket early in the fourth quarter.
Nobody else scored more than three points for Canadian. The 6-foot-6 Pennington was an obvious focal point, but for the Wildcats to keep succeeding in district, their other players will have to prove their worth paying attention to defensively.
“I think our guys know (Pennington) still needs to touch the ball,” Wall said. “Teams are going to adjust and Riggs has to have confidence in his teammates that they’re going to make some shots when it counts. I think this was a really good win for us against a really good defensive team that we’re going to see later down the road.”
Perhaps because others seemed unable to step up and score, the game never turned into a rout. Pennington scored all seven of Canadian’s points in the second quarter as the Wildcats built their lead to double digits.
Bushland (9-7, 0-1) did seriously threaten later in the quarter, though. King actually outscored Pennington with eight points in the third quarter, and by the end of the period the Falcons trimmed Canadian’s lead to 27-25.
That was as close as they got, though. King led the Falcons with 14 points and Bidegain added 11, but only one other Bushland player scored.