Shooting Woes Lead to Loss in Season Opener

York, NE - Basketball season is officially upon us as the Emmaus Eagles Men's team began their season this past weekend. The Eagles made the seven hour trip over to York, Nebraska to challenge the York College Panthers, who are NCCAA D2/NAIA opponents. The game however, did not go as planned and quickly turned into a tale of missed bunnies and turnovers.

The Panthers scored four points right away, but a 3 pointer from Stevie Horan brought the score to 3-4 in favor of York. That would be the closest the score would ever get as the men started off slow and could never quite catch up. York went on a 25-3 run in the first 10 minutes of the game, only ending on another 3 pointer, this time coming from Nehemiah Watson.

The men did everything they could to try to claw back into reach of the Panthers, but it was not enough as the first half ended on a last second buzzer-beater putback by the opponents, giving them a 64-39 advantage heading into the locker room. The rest of the game would continue to go in York's favor, with the final score ending at 120-59. Even in the midst of a tough loss, there were several things Emmaus did very well, which they hope to build on this week in upcoming games.

Our men only accumulated 14 fouls over the course of the game (9 came in the first half) while York racked up 29 (18 being first half fouls). This led to 34 free throw attempts for Emmaus compared to a grand total of 13 for York the entire game. The Eagles converted well on those free throws, hitting 21 out of 34 attempts from the charity stripe and notching 61% on the night. Three Eagles hit double digits in the scoring category (Horan, Brandon Redding, Caleb Williams); Williams and Redding being only a couple of rebounds shy of gaining their first double-doubles of the season.

Coach Edmondson shared some thoughts on the game and how the team performed as a whole saying "We did some things well at times, but we were not consistent on offense and transition defense was poor". Looking forward, he added "This was an early opening game so it gave us a chance to see some of the new guys in a game situation and now we have two exhibition games coming up to help us learn more about our team before we get into the meat of our schedule."

The Eagles will continue play this week with a couple of  Exhibition games against Loras' JV squad on Thursday, and the Alumni on Saturday.