Riverhawk boys endure tough non-league schedule

The Class 4A Riverhawks, guided by first-year Coach Jordan Rowland, were seeking to get their first win Tuesday at home versus the Class 6A Willamette High Wolverines (result was after the printed edition deadline). The Dalles plays its next game Thursday at home in a 6:30 p.m. Gorge rivalry match up against the Class 5A Hood River Valley High Eagles (2-4) at Kurtz Gym. The two teams split two close games last year with both winning home contests.

“Obviously, things didn’t go our way in the game against South Eugene,” Rowland said. “Their school has over 2,000 students and we barely have 800, so I think that score was kind of expected. The schedule we’ve played has been against teams that really push our kids to see how tough they can be.

“You do get better when you play better teams. It opens your eyes a little bit to some things that maybe you need to work on more, so playing strong opponents really does help your team improve.”

In the match up versus Cascade, senior Styles DeLeon led the Riverhawks in scoring with 23 points and junior Andre Niko had nine points.

In the lopsided loss to South Eugene, the Riverhawks had three players score in double figures, led by DeLeon with 15, Josh Taylor with 13 and Will Lee with 12.

“We definitely have a lot of talent on our team, but it’s been a transition for us with the coaching change this year,” said Rowland, who took over the head coach position after former Coach Greg Cummings unexpectedly stepped down Oct. 28, just 17 days before the season started. “In my opinion, we’re letting teams score too many points against us. We really have to start picking things up on the defensive end and start working a little bit harder. I think that’s going to be the key to our success. At some point, I feel like our defense will start to click better and then we should start being where I think we should be defensively.”

The Riverhawks are trying to overcome the loss of two key players to injuries. Senior post Braden Schwartz is on the injury list with a broken finger, and he’ll return to the lineup sometime in early January. Junior guard Cooper Cummings has a fractured wrist and he’s unable to play while recovering from the injury. He won’t be available to play anytime soon, but he could return to the lineup later in the season.

The Riverhawks have moved junior Luke Woods and sophomore Nolan Cates up from the junior varsity squad to replace Schwartz and Cummings in the varsity lineup.

“We saw some decent minutes from Nolan Cates in the South Eugene game, and he did pretty well in his first varsity game,” said Rowland. “I pulled out Styles and Henry (Begay) early in that game and Andre actually fouled out. I just didn’t want our top three guys playing in a game like that with such a lopsided score. We also had some freshmen that we let play in the fourth quarter, too, against South Eugene.”