The Juneau Empire’s expanded coverage of the Juneau Lions Club 74th Gold Medal Basketball Tournament is made possible by Sealaska Corp. Thanks to this sponsorship, this article —and all of this year’s Gold Medal coverage — is available online without a subscription to the Empire.
A Juneau-vs.-Sitka game started off Gold Medal action Monday morning with a 10 a.m. M Bracket game.
Sitka fought throughout each quarter to keep the score close, however, Juneau proved to be a little too much by maintaining a 20-point lead through much of the game for a 60-40 finish.
Juneau coach Ethan Billings said the key to their path to victory throughout the tournament is keeping players on the team “fresh.”
“I think we were able to rotate our guys, which is huge,” Billings said. “I think that’s the key to this master’s bracket, is to try and avoid injury and keep everyone rested. So it was good, we just try to stay on top of defense more than the other team”
For Juneau, lead scorers were Jim Carson with 14 points and James Mercer with 11 points. Lead scorer for Sitka was Patrick Miller with 18 points.
Next up Juneau plays the winner of the Hoonah-Klukwan game at 9 p.m. on Thursday, and Sitka plays Wednesday at 6 p.m. against Kake.
• Contact reporter Jonson Kuhn at jonson.kuhn@juneauempire.com.
