March 7, 2022
Chat with Coach Biehl #9
by Brother Neal Golden, S.C. (CJ ’57)
"The Crusaders’ season ended the Saturday before Mardi Gras with a 62-50 loss at Curtis in the Division I quarterfinals.
The Patriots jumped to a 7-0 lead and led by as many as eleven before Martin cut the margin to 21-17 at the half. But the momentum didn’t carry over as Curtis again scored the first seven points in the second half on their way to a 39-24 lead at the end of the third period. The Crusaders were able to cut the margin by only three the rest of the way as the Patriots advanced to the semifinals with a 62-50 win.
“We did what we were supposed to do to start the game,” says Coach Chris Biehl, “but we did a terrible job of capitalizing on the turnovers that we created. If you grade our defense, it was an A- or B+ effort. But capitalizing off that was an F.
“We finished the game at 29% shooting, and I don’t care who you’re playing, if you shoot 29%, you’re not going to win most games. They’re a good team that made it to the state championship game and lost to Scotlandville by only four. They didn’t do anything we didn’t expect them to do. They’re quick and aggressive on the ball. The game plan was to go right at them. At the end of the day, they earned the win. The frustrating thing is to see the shot chart and look at all the X’s (misses), and a lot of them were close to the goal. It was a frustrating way to end the season.”
The Crusaders finished with a 23-9 record. However, they were just 4-4 in their last eight games. Clayton Lonardo missed all eight of those games, and Ray Lotten missed four of them.
“People forget Jayden George. He started the first games of the season before suffering an injury. He played only limited minutes in two of those last eight games. Everybody knows how important Lonardo and Lotten are to us, but people have no clue how important Jayden was to us. He’s 6’2” and a great rebounder. He’s also one of our best shot blockers and one of our best defensive players. He’s only a sophomore.”
What were the expectations last summer? “Realistically, the coaching staff and I knew this could be a tough season. We thought it would be a rebuilding year. We were replacing three prominent senior starters plus our sixth man. But midway through the summer, we felt the team had a chance to be pretty good after we went 11-1 in the Metro League.”
“Looking to next year, we’re losing two extremely good seniors. Replacing Marvin Jones is going to be darn near impossible. He played steady every night, eight points, eight rebounds, and guarded the other team’s best player. Jace Patin was named to the All-District Team. He fought injuries for the majority of his career at Brother Martin. Those two kids will be tough to replace.
“DJ Fowler is going into his senior year. We need him to step up and have a good year, and I think he’s ready to do that. Sophomore Parker Dinsdale proved to a lot of people how tough he is. He played out of position this year. We’ll move him to small forward instead of inside. He had to play center when we lost Lonardo and Lotten. That’s obviously not his position. Troy Santa Marina had his best games the last five games of the year. He was coming off a horrendous knee injury his sophomore year. He played predominantly JV ball.”
“The defense was solid all year long, but we did a poor job of putting the ball in the hole. That will be a point of emphasis. We won’t have our own gym until June 1. We need to lock down places where they can get shots. We need gym rats.
“Our best three-point shooter shot only 36%. That’s not very good. As a team we were around 22% on threes. That’s not going to cut it in the style of basketball these days.
“Our free throw shooting was embarrassing. As a team, we shot 58%. Biddy teams shoot better than that. It wasn’t from lack of practice.
“We had nine losses. In seven of those, if we made a few more free throws we would have won. Only three of our losses were by double digits. We lost the last game by 12, and we missed nine free throws in the second half alone. Two of those were front ends of one-and-ones.”
You can bet that the Crusaders will be back next November ready to compete for the district title and beyond."
