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Petersen: 'We could be better'
The first half of the conference season, which officially ended for the Quincy High School boys basketball team when its beat Ellensburg 41-40 in an overtime thriller last Friday, was a decidedly up-and-down affair for the Jacks.
The good news is, however, that the Jacks are firmly in the thick of the conference championship hunt, and they know that they can beat anybody — they have already knocked of Wapato and Grandview, two of the conference's first-place teams, and came extremely close to beating the third, Toppenish.
But head coach Wade Petersen thinks there's still more potential to be tapped.
"I told the kids I think we've a little underachieved," he said. "I thought we could be better. We could've won a couple of close games that we didn't, but we could've lost a couple of the close games that we won. I told the kids on a scale of one to 10, we're looking at about a six or a seven as far as where I see us. The key is, though, at the end of the season when you get to districts and state that you're playing at around a nine or a 10. If you can do that, then you're going to go a long way."
The fact that the league is so tightly bunched — behind the league leaders sit two teams at 6-4 and four teams at 4-6 — does serve to motivate the Jacks and keep things in proper perspective.
There's no doubt that they'd love to win a league title, or at least finish in the top four and avoid a loser-out first-round district playoff game. But Petersen has the players focused on one game at a time.
"We gotta look game-to-game because the second half of the season is where it starts to separate back out," point guard Jay Cedergreen said. "People get tired, teams get tired. You're getting to the monotonous grind of the season; you've been to practice for 40 days. This is where you really gotta step up and just concentrate on the next game. If you can get up for the last part of the season, because it's a marathon and not a sprint, then you can push ahead and eventually get those goals. But we're just trying to concentrate on the next game, and (hopefully) it will lead to something bigger.
"Everything's within reach. I mean, you'd like to think that, 'Wow, we've got a shot at first place.' But the realistic (thought) is that you've still got a shot at ninth place. You can't get on a high pedestal there, so you gotta try to keep a realistic train of thought."
And that's where it will help that the Jacks have eight seniors, according to Petersen. There are more adjustments for the Jacks to make in the coming weeks; only time will tell if they are the right ones.
"It does (motivate the kids to know that the league is so tight)," Petersen said. "It's nice that we're old, because if we weren't, that could be a real burden on the kids, a lot of pressure. Our kids are older and have been through this. I don't think there's anything than can happen this year that we haven't seen. We've been ahead at the end, behind at the end, one second left and we have to score, one second left and we have to get a stop. I don't think anybody can throw anything at us at this point that we haven't done before. The kids have been through it; they know what to do. That's why the experience will help in the end."
Contact Doug Flanagan at reporter@qvpr.com or through Facebook:
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