The Douglas boys' basketball team saw a solid defensive performance go to waste against Orem, Utah in the George Maldonado Tournament at Galena High Friday night as the Tigers fell victim to their worst offensive performance of the season.
Orem took a 48-38 win in the consolation bracket of the tournament, sending Douglas to the seventh-place game today against Weston Ranch.
It was Douglas' lowest-scoring outing of the year by 18 points.
"We were terrible shooting the ball tonight," said Douglas forward Jeff Nady, who finished with six points. "I don't what was going on. The shots just weren't falling for us.
"It seemed like we couldn't even buy a basket tonight."
Of course, there was that whole matter of Douglas coming off two consecutive games against teams ranked in the top 10 nationally as well. Douglas lost to No. 10 Artlington Country Day on Wednesday and to No. 2 Artesia Thursday, both of which the Tigers were very competitive in.
"The intensity just wasn't there for this one," Douglas coach Rob Streeter said. "It seemed like there was a bit of a let down after the last two games.
"Outside of that, we shot only 38 percent from the field and that killed us. Orem showed us something defensively that we haven't seen much of yet with that packed zone and that caused us problems for us.
"We're still booting the ball around way too much."
Douglas put together a 5-3 lead early on with a 3-pointer by Mike Gransbery to open the game and a basket from Keith Olson, but that was the last time Douglas led in the game.
Orem never got out to more than seven points in front before the last minute, but Douglas couldn't do anything to shift the momentum its direction as they failed to put together any unanswered field goals or any points in transition.
Orem scored eight unanswered points in the last minute to close out the game.
"We tied it at 34 there late in the game, but they went on 14-4 run on us," Streeter said. "We can't expect to win if we can't close out the game well."
Nady agreed.
"We held them under 50 and usually when you can get that kind of defensive effort, that's enough to pull you through," he said. "But we just couldn't get it going on offense.
"This is a team we probably should have beat but we couldn't find a way to do it, so hopefully we'll be able to learn from that and get better tomorrow."
Olson led Douglas offensively with 12 points, but fouled out with 3:25 to go on a questionable call inside when it looked like the Orem player just fell down.
Gransbery had nine points, Kevin Emm had five and David Laird and Jared Trowbridge each had two.
Defensively, it was a solid outing for the Tigers against a team that boasted several strong outside shooters. For the tournament, the Tigers are allowing an average of just over three 3-pointers a game against three very strong outside shooting teams which is a testament to Douglas' improved perimeter defense.
"It was a solid game for us defensively," Streeter said. "The effort was there, but we just couldn't find a rhythm."
Douglas dropped to 6-3 on the year.
