By Derek Hendrickson

The Butte Central Maroons avenged a previous loss to their longtime rival, the Anaconda Copperheads, with a 64-46 win Friday night at the Maroon Activity Center.

The night featured Butte Central’s third annual Cancer Schmancer Night, honoring cancer survivors and caregivers. The Lady Maroons handed out carnations to pay tribute to all those who have braved the fight with cancer during the boys’ game warm up.  The Lady Maroons were still dressed in their pink jerseys as the boys wore pink warmup T-shirts in what has become a well-received tradition.

Butte Central used a balanced attack and a big run that spanned the first and second quarters to pull away to a big lead and were never seriously challenged after halftime.

Nate McGree led the Maroons with 16 point and 12 rebounds, half of which were on the offensive glass.  He put in 8 points in the first as Central closed the quarter with an eight-nothing run to lead 16-10.

Central continued to pour it on in the second quarter, racing out to a 28-12 advantage that was capped when Cade Holter drained a three that he was fouled on.  Anaconda finally got free throws from Braxton Hill to stop the 20-2 run but the damage was done.

The Copperheads got into early foul trouble and had 3 starters saddled on the bench before halftime with three fouls apiece.  They were also playing without Bobby Swainston, who played a key role in the earlier game in Anaconda, won by the Copperheads 47-44.

Anaconda was also without their head coach Bill Hill, who was being disciplined by the school for undisclosed reasons.

Maroon head coach Brodie Kelly was asked about the differences in the games and said, “They are short-handed, so that’s the reality there, but I hope we are getting better.  I feel like we are starting to gel a little bit better chemistry wise, kind of understand what we are trying to do better.  We held them to a similar number of points as down there and I feel like we are doing a better job defensively than we were in December.”

The missing personnel seemed to throw the Copperheads out of their game as they not only got into foul trouble but hurt themselves with several sloppy turnovers in the first half that aided the big Maroon run.

The number of whistles was certainly something both teams had to deal with but Kelly found a lot of positives from that, saying, “There was a lack of flow, a lot of stoppages, a lot of free throws, hard to have a rhythm, but with that said it was scrappy, both teams were playing really hard.  I was really happy with our effort tonight, especially our offensive rebounding effort, that was good.”

Central led 34-21 going into half time and slowly pulled away, outscoring Anaconda in all four quarters which allowed them to rotate in some bench players with a key conference game loomingSaturday at the MAC vs. Stevensville.

“They’re big,” Kelly said in reference to the rematch tomorrow. “They play a lineup with five guys over 6-3 and there are times where we are outsized there. We are going to have to counter that with some toughness and helping each other out better than we did in the game down there.  We’ve got to play better offensively, we had a stretch down there where we went 8 minutes without a bucket.  We’ve got to be more consistent but we’ve been using the post better and obviously getting fouled better.”

The reference to getting fouled was evident Friday as the Maroons consistently drew contact near the bucket and were rewarded with 26 free throws, making 19.  Anaconda actually had more, with 30 but only connected on 13, missing out on a big chance to close the gap from the stripe.

Central had a very balanced scoring attack that saw 4 players reach double figures and all seven who scored put in at least four points.

Sam Johnston had 11 points, three assists and three steals in addition to playing defense on Hill, who led everyone with 19 but had to work for every shot as the Maroon defense keyed on him.

Tanner Kump and Matt Simkins both had 10, Dan McCloskey added seven, Holter was good for six and Jared Simkins netted four.

Anaconda also got 12 points from Trent Mikalatos to go with a game high 13 boards and two blocks. The Copperheads tried various combinations of players to find a spark but were never able to make enough of a dent in the Maroon lead to cause much concern from the Maroon faithful.  Anaconda couldn’t connect on a three point try during the game which certainly didn’t help their cause.

The Copperheads have struggled recently and fell to 5-7 on the season, dropping four of their last five, including a 65-47 decision at Whitehall on Thursday evening.  The Trojans were ranked No. 1 one earlier this week by Montana Sports amongst Class B schools.

Central improved to 5-6 on the season and are hoping to string together a win streak as they are more than halfway through the regular portion of their schedule.  The Maroons have now won three of four and will face three conference foes in the next 10 days which will go a long ways towards their seeding for the upcoming Super Divisional held in Hamilton during the last week of February.

Kelly talked about his players starting to have a better understanding of what is expected of them compared to earlier in the year and that is paying dividends for everyone, especially the younger players.

“We’ve done so much rotating this year,” Kelly said, “that finding a more consistent rotation is important and I think guys are finding a role within that.  The shorter rotation guys are having a much better chance of knowing their role, playing together and getting into a grove.”

ANACONDA (5-7) — Devon Kopp 2 0-2 4, Kaden Stetzner 1 3-3 5, Riley Cobban 0 0-0 0, Trent Mikalatos 4 4-7 12, Braxton Hill 6 7-10 19, Matt Ryan 0 0-2 0, Ky Kellogg’s 1 1-2 3, Dylan Smith 0 3-4 3. Totals 14 13-30 46.
BUTTE CENTRAL (5-6) — Sam Johnston 3 4-5 11, Tanner Kump 2 5-6 10, Nate McGree 8 0-0 16, Dan McCloskey 2 1-2 7, Luke Heaphy 0 0-0 0, Cade Holter 1 3-5 6, Matt Simkins 4 2-2 10, Jared Simkins 0 4-6 4, Archie Petritz 0 0-0 0, Aaron Richards 0 0-0 0, Hunter Hartwick 0 0-0 0, Zach Carlson 0 0-0 0, Tyge Yelenich 0 0-0 0. Totals 20 19-26 64.
Anaconda            10        11        9        16 — 46
Butte Central      16        18       12       18 — 64
3-point goals — BC 5 (McCloskey 2, Johnston, Holter, Kump), Anaconda 0. Fouls — BC 22, Anaconda 23. Fouled out — Cobban, Hill, McGree. Technicals — none.  Turnovers — BC 9, Anaconda 17.  Rebounds — BC 31 (McGree 12), Anaconda 30 (Mikalatos 13). Blocks — BC 3 (M Simkins 2), Anaconda 2 (Mikalatos 2).  Assists — BC 11 (Johnston 3, J Simkins 3), Anaconda 5 (Hill 3).