Midway through the second quarter of Friday's home non-conference game against the Filer Wildcats, Wood River High School boys' basketball coach Fred Trenkle reviewed the situation with his team during a time out.
Wood River, leading 22-8, had capitalized on 10 Wildcat turnovers in the first period and had done a good job executing its offense. Trenkle said he wanted to see a similar strong effort on the defensive end.
"I challenged them to be more aggressive," Trenkle later said. And the Wolverine players responded on defense.
They allowed Filer only four more field goals for the rest of the game and walked away with a 59-21 victory—the first win of the season and Wood River's first in 10 games dating back to last season.
"We played a good, solid ball game and executed pretty well," said Trenkle. "We just out-manned Filer, but you need a game like that every now and then. For us every night should be a battle this season so we'll have to out-execute them."
A strong trapping man-to-man defense did the job in the third quarter when Wood River outscored Filer 18-3, then the Wolverines were also effective in the zone "D" in the fourth. When it was all done, 10 different Wolverines had scored.
"We faced our first zone defense and it was a match-up zone to boot," said Trenkle. "We did some good things."
Junior guard David Sibrian (5 steals) scored 9 of his 11 points in the second half to lead Wood River (1-1). Other key numbers were Wood River's 27-16 rebounding edge, 19 steals by the Wolverines and 31 turnovers by the Wildcats (0-2).
Leading Wood River's defense were juniors Cory Rutkowski (9 points, 2 boards, 2 steals, 2 assists) and Cooper McCroskey (6 points). Jesse Stark finished with 7 points, 4 rebounds, 3 steals and 3 assists.
Other contributors were Casey Lane (4 points, 3 boards, 4 steals), Corbin Miniard (6 points, 6 rebounds), Erik Jacobson (4 points, 4 boards), Kyle Lubeck (5 points, 4 rebounds), Danny Sibrian (5 points, 2 steals, 2 assists) and Travis Beckman (2 points, 2 rebounds).
Trenkle cautioned that Wood River won't always be using 10 players so liberally. "That's two games in a row that everybody played about the same. But the cream has to come to the top. I've challenged them as to who wants to play."
Winner of Wood River Basketball's sportsmanship award going to an opponent was Filer's Trent Garner (4 points, 3 boards). Top Wildcat was Dustin Hyman (6 points).
In the junior varsity game, Wood River's determined rally cut its 25-point deficit to just seven points but Filer pulled out a 52-44 victory.
Wood River hosted Pocatello (1-1) Tuesday in Hailey. Pocatello lost 87-53 at Twin Falls Friday after opening the 2005-06 season with a 56-42 win over Minico (1-1).
On Thursday, Wood River visits Buhl's new gym for a non-conference affair with a solid Tribe squad (1-0) that beat Middleton 52-45 at home Friday. The Wolverines go to Kimberly (1-1) Friday. Shooting well from the perimeter, Kimberly rallied past host Wendell 58-54 last Friday.
