Bobcats fall to North Country

Thursday night, the Paul Smith's men's basketball team took on their rivals from North Country Community College. Though they played well, the Bobcats lost the game 77-42. After the game, Coach Dominique Boone made a few observations, "During the first half of the game we played well and executed our game plan. This kept us within reach at halftime being down 12. Second half turnovers are what made things difficult for us to stay in the game. Nick Shalayda came in and gave valuable minutes, Tyler Hoellerer did a great job controlling the tempo for majority of the game, and Todd VonNostrand was great on the inside taking several charges and creating mismatches down low." Coach Boone seems like he has been able to use each player's strengths for the good of the team, a sign of a true coach devoted to his team.

Freshman Nick Shalayda came into the game scoring six points and he had this to say about the team's performance; "Our mindset going into the game we knew we had nothing to lose. We put all our effort out on the floor and it showed at halftime. We really showed improvement from our first half of the season. At the end it was our fans keeping us in it by shouting and cheering down to the last buzzer." It seems like the enthusiasm of the fans is helping the team play and progress, so keep it up people.

Todd VonNostrand also scored six points that night. Here's his take on how the game went down; "For the first half of basketball we had a really good NCCC basketball team on the ropes. We were only down 12 points at halftime which was a huge improvement from last time we played them. We are missing a lot of key players on our team so our role players had to step up. Coach Boone has done a great job with us and I'm excited to see what he does with this program in the future." Many people, players and fans alike have great hope for this team's success in future years.

With current team's stats at three wins and three losses, this young team is looking to shake off this loss and come back on Saturday with a win over Albany Pharmacy. 

-Peter Mahoney