The Evanston boys basketball team heads to Green River tonight and hosts Rock Springs on Saturday with an eye on doubling their winning streak from two to four games.

“Both of these teams are going to try to make the game a little more ugly. So, it’s going to be really important for us to focus and execute. It’s going to be more difficult to do that,” coach Bubba O’Neill said. “They’re not going to let us get into the halfcourt offense, move the basketball and make layups. It will be more important for us to be patient. I think the most important thing is for us to be disciplined each and every trip.”

Green River is 0-3 in conference games this season and 3-12 overall.

“I watched them play. They’re young, but they’ve gotten a lot better. As you look at the scores of their games, you can see they’ve gotten closer. They’ve given some teams some scares,” O’Neill said. “They took Riverton to overtime. I went over and watched them play Rock Springs. That was a close game into the fourth quarter.”

O’Neill said Green River is a guard-oriented team and they will likely try to push the tempo against the more methodical Red Devils.

“They’re going to try to get up and down. They like to shoot early and shoot a lot of 3’s. They’re going to press you a little bit and trap you all over the place. They’ll try to make it an ugly game. That’s probably what you should do with a young team like that,” he said. “They do have a very good atmosphere. I think the main thing is to understand that we have to do what we have to do to be successful and not get caught up in what they’re doing. But let’s play the game the way we know we need to. Hopefully, our leadership will take care of that.”

The Red Devils host Rock Springs on Saturday. The Tigers were ranked No. 2 in the state until last week and are currently ranked No. 4.

For the complete article see the 02-05-2010 issue.

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