By BEN MUPRHY
Cleaver Sportswriter
Clare played one of the toughest teams on their schedule on Wednesday, Dec. 18. The Pioneers were playing a boys basketball Jack Pine Conference game at Standish-Sterling, which they lost, 61-33.
“Standish is a very good team, we beat them in the district finals last year by two, but I believe all five of them are back,” head coach Byron Schunk said. “A year experience makes a huge difference and they all started as juniors. They are very deep, they play nine guys, and they are just a good, good basketball team.”
Clare was down 10-3 after the first quarter. Standish led 20-10 late in the second quarter, and they scored four points in the final 30 seconds to claim a 24-10 lead by the break. The Pioneers fell further back in the third and faced a 45-23 deficit with just the fourth left to play.
Ryan Louch led the Pioneers with 10 points, Chase Randall scored nine and Parker Smith netted six.
“Randall improved dramatically rebounding, he had to be around 15 rebounds, he was a very bright spot,” Schunk said. “Louch was a bright spot too but we just have to be more consistent and we need to keep improving, it’s a long season.”
Clare (2-4 overall, 2-3 JPC) is off until Jan. 3 when they make the trip to play at Boyne City. They return home to take on Ithaca Jan. 7.
“We have a long break, for this team this is good because it gives us a lot of time to work on things,” Schunk said. “We come back with Boyne City which is a good squad, followed up with an excellent squad of Ithaca which beat Standish the next game. Obviously, we have a lot of gams in January and we will just keep working on it, that’s all we can do. The guys attitudes have been good, the effort has been great, no problems there.”
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