Outside factors affect Highland in loss to Teurlings

Published 7:30 am Sunday, January 10, 2021

It’s been an up-and-down roller coaster type season for Highland Baptist boys basketball.

Saturday, the Bears were on the downhill portion of the ride as a number of external forces wreaked havoc with the Bears in a 64-42 loss to Teurlings Saturday.

“We just didn’t play very well today,” said HBCS coach Kaleb Gardner, whose team fell to 7-5 on the season. “We missed a lot of our opportunities and they made a lot of theirs.”

Matthew Monceaux led the Rebels with 18 points and Caleb Thomas added 11 as Teurlings, which trailed 15-13 at the end of the first quarter, outscored Highland 51-29 the rest of the way for the win.

“We had a lot of interesting things today,” Gardner said. “Johnny Clark, one of our captains, was shook up because of the death of his grandfather. We had another kid that was at a church retreat. He came in midway through the game.

“Myles (Liggans) cuts his toe this morning before the game. It was a lot of external things so it was really hard to judge today’s game and what we need to work on. It’s not a game that we are going to nitpick. We had some things go on that caused us to be out of whack and we’ll leave it at that.”

Gardner said that it has been an up-and-down year for Highland through roughly the first half of the schedule.

“The biggest thing is that we have to make free throws,” Gardner said. “The next things is that we have to put the puzzle pieces in the right order.

“It’s a game by game thing and that’s the challenge of it.”

Liggans, who played despite the injury, led HBCS with 10 points and Matthew Elrod added 9 points.

Highland returns to action Thursday at Erath before coming back home Saturday against Hackberry

“We’ve won a few big games and we’ve lost a few big games,” the HBCS coach said.