Mavericks split two game weekend

The North County Mavericks (2-2), split games this past weekend as they traveled south to the Lewistown Invitational to face the Denton-Geyser-Stanford (DGS) Bearcats on Friday night and the Geraldine-Highwood Rivals on Saturday. DGS handed the Mavericks a loss, but North Country regrouped to defeat the Rivals handily.

“Right now we are just a little inconsistent,” Mavericks Head Coach Barry Malone said. “On Friday we didn’t come out very strong.”

In North Country’s 67-46 win against the Rivals, the team was led by senior Cache Younkin, who scored 24 points. Trace Simonson had 13 points. Christian Menge and John McColly both had six points apiece.

“Cache stepped up for us,” Coach Malone said. “Offensively, he was a spark-plug for us. He led us in scoring but he also had some key assists and found some post players underneath.”

Coach Malone said that he felt the team did a complete 180 after their loss to DGS.

“We worked pretty hard,” he said. “We boxed out better, kept them off the boards better against the teams that we had played previously.”

The team had a 31-24 lead at the half and they continued to add to the lead by outscoring the Rivals 16-10 in the third quarter and 20-12 in the fourth.

“We were a little more patient and got some good offensive looks,” Coach Malone said. “We let our offense take its course, found our open spots and knocked down our shots.”

He also praised his post-players, including Menge who shined coming off of the bench.

“He played very stellar defense against their big guy,” Coach Malone said. “I was really impressed with his play on Saturday night.”

In their 53-36 loss to DGS, the Mavericks were led by Simonson who scored 16 points.

Coach Malone admitted that DGS was pretty athletic.

“We didn’t respond well,” he said. “We kind of dug ourselves a hole.”

The Mavs fell behind 19-8 early in the first quarter and were unable to catch up.

“We defended a lot better in the second half of that game but we need to step up and put a full game together and I think we did that on Saturday,” Coach Malone said.

This week the team is set to take on Brockton in Brockton on Friday night at 7:30 p.m. They will then take on Class 2B’s Glasgow Scotties in Saco on Saturday evening at 5:00 p.m.