By CLAUDE SCILLEY

Both teams made it abundantly clear Tuesday that it was the opening game of their respective senior high school basketball seasons, with passes that were just a wee bit off the mark, defenders zigging when they should be zagging, and shooting that was colder than the snow falling outside.

For the Loyalist Lancers, there was more to it than simply making the mistakes that typically accompany the opening game of the regular season. For them, it was their first game of the year—period.

“We’re not in basketball shape, but we’ll get there,” Loyalist coach Jason Wimmer vowed after his team was defeated 49-33 by the visiting Holy Crusaders.

“It’s a long season.”

The Lancers led the game 17-14 at one point in the first half but they trailed by nine points, 30-21, at halftime. Loyalist got within eight points at 36-28 after Kaelan Ingersoll’s second of three second-half three-point baskets midway through the third quarter but that’s when Holy Cross took over, outscoring the home team 13-5 to the end of the game.

Realistically, the Crusaders’ lead was never seriously threatened.

“We’re young, and have relatively little basketball experience,” Wimmer said. “We’re working on learning the game, and it takes time to teach them everything they really need to know for senior basketball.

“We’ve got a strong point guard (Ingersoll) and a strong post player (Taylor Pettingill), who seem to have a good chemistry together, and they all work hard. At the end of the day you can’t fault them. They worked as hard as they possibly could and we just kind of ran out of steam.”

The Lancers were more adept Tuesday at getting the ball inside than they were doing anything with it once it got there.

“It’s the game speed,” Wimmer said. “That’s the first game for us, so it will take some time adjusting to the game speed and the physicality part of it. It’s hard to recreate that in practice. You try to, but it’s just not the same.”

Wimmer believes his team will improve with game competition.

“When you have a point guard who can handle it, that’s pretty valuable, and when you have a post player who can finish inside and shoot it from the perimeter as well, that dual threat is really nice.”

Ingersoll led the Lancers with 18 points, including 11—all but one of his team’s 12 points—in the second half, while teammate Vincent Leung scored eight points.

Jeremy Pendergast led Holy Cross, which came into the game with a 2-3 record in preseason play. He had a game-best 23 points, 15 of them in the first half and then seven of his team’s first 12 points in the second. Ryan Clancy added nine points to the winning attack.

Elsewhere, 58 was the magic number for the other two home teams on opening day in the Kingston Area Secondary Schools Athletic Association. The La Salle Black Knights, OFSAA double-A quarter-finalists last year, got 20 points from Mason Kenehan as they beat the Napanee Golden Hawks 58-47, and Seger Vesnaver scored 17 points for the Kingston Blues as they defeated the Granite Ridge Gryphons 58-23.

Matt Campbell scored 11 points for Napanee.

Isaac McFayden and Emile Flavin each scored seven points for KC, with McFayden adding five steals to the Blues’ winning cause.

Play resumes Thursday with five games, including a match at Frontenac where the defending champion Falcons will host the Bayridge Blazers.