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Angoon and Hoonah played against each other at 7:30 p.m. for the second-to last game on Sunday night. Angoon came out strong, maintaining the lead through much of the first quarter. But Hoonah was persistent and while the score remained close throughout, Hoonah stepped on the gas in the fourth quarter for a 79-54 win.
Hoonah coach Albert Hinchman said the key to catching up in points and securing the win came down mostly to pacing and conserving energy throughout the game.
“Angoon has some really good shooters on their team, we’ve known that for years and we knew that they were going to come out hot, we just had to make an adjustment with a couple timeouts and figured if we start picking up the pace we’d be able to outrun them a little bit,” Hinchman said. “The guys really stepped on on defense, we got a couple new guys on the team and so hopefully the chemistry will get better throughout the week. It’s been a couple years since we’ve been here, unfortunately we lost a few years of being able to be at Gold Medal, so being able to see some familiar faces along with new guys on the teams, it’s been awesome to have Gold Medal back. We’re excited to be here and hopefully we can put on a good show while we’re here.”
Top scorers for Angoon were Curtis Lane with 19 points and John Crosmum Jr. with 13. For Hoonah, Travis Dybdahl led his team with 32 points with Braxton Booze putting up 11 points, as well.
Hoonah next plays against Filcom at 6 p.m. on Monday and Angoon will play whoever loses the Monday 11:30 a.m. game against Kake and Klukwan at 9 p.m. on Tuesday.
