Cardinals Earn Two Big Wins

Last week the Soda Springs Cardinals took on two district opponents.  Every district win will help the Cardinals earn a higher seed come tournament time.  So far this season Declo has established themselves as the top team in the conference.  Most people considered West Side to be the presumptive number two.  After those two the conference looked to be a tight race for third between Soda Springs, Malad, and Wendell with Aberdeen bringing up the rear.  Well Aberdeen went and upset Malad throwing their hat into the ring.  That is why each of last week’s games were so important for the Cardinals.

For their first game of the week the Cardinals hosted Malad.  Malad is a team that can be streaky and can cause problems for a lot of teams if they get hot from outside.  As the game got started it wasn’t the Dragons that got hot from outside it was the Cardinal’s Cooper Thompson that caught fire.  Thompson hit four three point shots in the first and helped the Cardinals finish five points ahead at the end of the quarter.  Thompson and almost all of the Cardinals cooled off in the second quarter.  Soda Springs struggled to get any shots to fall and by halfway through the quarter Malad had tied the game.  The rough quarter was salvaged by seven points from Gavin Hansen and the Cardinals headed to the halftime break with just a one point lead.  In the third quarter Soda Springs got rolling again.  Thompson added two more threes and Kirby added eight points of his own.  The good shooting from that pair extended the Soda Springs lead to six going into the fourth quarter.  Nearly six minutes into the last quarter of the game each team had struggled to score.  To that point the Cardinals had only outscored the Dragons four to two in the period.  The last two minutes of the game really tightened up.  Following several timeouts by each team Malad had worked their way back to within four points with just over thirty seconds left.  Malad was forced to start fouling but ran out of time.  The Cardinals dodged a bullet winning the game by five while watching Malad go just three for ten from the foul line.

Up next for the Cardinals was West Side.  The Pirates had beaten the Cardinals earlier in the month by thirteen points in Dayton.  Last week’s game was at the Bird Nest in Soda Springs.  This game would remain close throughout but would not be one that either team will want to emulate again.  In the first made baskets were outnumbered by fouls and missed shots.  The two teams struggled to get into any offensive flow and the quarter ended with the score even at just nine points.  During the second period the Cardinals appeared to be pulling away as they pulled out to a seven point lead.  However the offensive struggles continued for the teams and the Pirates pulled back to within three to finish the first half.  The third quarter of the game was pretty much more of the same.  Several missed shots on both sides and Soda Springs continued to hold a small lead ending the quarter up by four.  For much of the fourth quarter the lead hovered between one and four points.  Each team burned through their timeouts trying to gain an advantage.  Foul shooting would be key in the end.  Soda Springs made more of theirs.  Gavin Hansen also came up with a pair of crucial steals at the end of the game preventing the Pirates from being able to score.  The game may have been ugly but the Cardinals walked away with the win.

The Cardinals face a busy week this week.  They played Grace on Tuesday at home in what was surely an intense battle for county bragging rights.  That game had not yet been played at the writing of this article.  The rest of the week the Cardinals will hit the road first traveling to Aberdeen on Thursday.  Like Malad the Tigers can be dangerous if they get going from the outside but the Cardinals should have the advantage inside.  Soda Springs finishes the week at Declo to take on a very tough Hornet team on Saturday.

Cardinals 16 7 18 8 49

Dragons 11 11 13 9 44

K.Kirby 8, C.Jacobson 2, C.Thompson 20, G.Hansen 15, K.McWilliams 4

Cardinals 9 12 12 11 44

Pirates 9 9 11 9 38

K.Kirby 6, C.Thompson 16, G.Hansen 11, C.McWilliams 11