Eagle Valley boys basketball ousted in third round of 5A state playoffs
Ben Roof/Special to the Daily
Zach Haglin left the Eagle Valley gym on Tuesday night with mixed feelings.
“Proud of the season we had but sad to see it end,” the Devils coach said after his team’s magical year came to a close in the third round of the 5A state playoffs. No. 4-seeded Eagle Valley couldn’t overcome an uncharacteristically poor shooting performance in a 73-54 loss to No. 13 Silver Creek.
“It just felt like everything was going in for them and nothing was dropping for us,” Haglin added.
The two-time defending Western Slope coach of the year wasn’t wrong. The Devils shot 38% from the field and were just 4-for-31 from beyond the arc while the Raptors were 60% from both spaces. The visitors’ two best players, Luke Schmeeckle and Connor Bonsett, got what they wanted all night. Bonsett led the way with 20 points while Schmeeckle dropped 18 more to go along with five assists, five steals and six boards. The Raptors’ defensive scheme left the 3-pointer available, and the Devils — who made 133 triples over the course of the year — happily took the bait.
“We got what we wanted, I thought,” Haglin commented. “We weren’t really doing anything wrong, it just wasn’t going in.”
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Late in the fourth quarter, the Devils whittled the deficit to nine. But the basketball gods weren’t on their side: The Raptors closed on a 13-3 run.
“We had opportunities to get that momentum going,” Haglin said. “And it just felt like every time we had that chance it just didn’t drop for us.”
Dan Anderson scored 15 points and Hudson Braun added 13 for the Devils. The team’s senior court general, Malachi Barros, tallied five steals and five boards while his comrade in the backcourt, Tavin Shreeve, led the Devils with six assists.
Eagle Valley finished the year with a 20-4 record. After falling to No. 1 Palisade in January, the Devils won their next 13 games in a row. They put two athletes on the all-conference first team, two more on the second team and two more on the honorable mention list in addition to sweeping the league crown and league coach of the year awards for the second-straight season. More than the successes, though, Haglin said he was grateful for the school and community support.
“I heard nothing but good things about our team this year and it was really cool to see everybody kind of come together and root us on,” he said. “Everyone has been awesome and really giving my guys a lot of good praise.”
Next year, the Devils reclassify to 4A and will move into the a new league with eight teams including Battle Mountain, Rifle, Aspen, Glenwood Springs, Delta and Coal Ridge. They’ll graduate two seniors in Barros and Dylan Hauseman. Haglin said Barros’ leadership was indispensable this season.
“The reason we were so successful was because we followed him,” the coach said of Barros before describing Hauseman as a spark plug on both ends of the floor. When Coronado was threatening in the team’s first playoff game last weekend, Hauseman hit a big three to push the Devil’s lead back to double digits. He had a timely assist to Anderson late in that game as well. On Feb. 2, his steal in the closing minutes clinched a 55-53 win over Evergreen.
“Dylan surprised me this year just coming in with his attitude and his energy and his ability to make things happen,” the coach said. “He made some big time plays at the right time this year.”
The Devils bring back sharpshooter Ethan Hovey, who experienced a massive breakout junior year after putting up hundreds of daily shots in the gym during his open period. Shreeve and Anderson — both sophomores — are “always on the same page” and work well together, Haglin said. Without Barros, Shreeve might shoulder more of a load in the back court next year.
“It will all depend on the off-season,” Haglin said. “I liked this year having both share the ball. I foresee seeing more press with the shot clock and zone to slow you down, so it’s nice to have the second guard there. But it all depends on who I have coming in.”
The first girls soccer game of the spring coincided with Tuesday’s playoff game, a testament to how deep of a run Haglin’s crew made this winter. That type of success wasn’t necessarily an expectation four months ago.
“Coming into the season, I didn’t expect us to be as good as we were right away,” Haglin said. “And then we just kept getting better. This year’s team was a team I felt could beat anybody. We ran into a team that played well on the night that counted.”
Reflecting on the past four months, Haglin said one main lesson he’s taking from this go around is to set high expectations — right from the start — next time.
“We definitely came into this year having a goal of making it to where we did, and I think if we’d made that goal to get further, it could have gotten us there,” he said. “I’m just really excited with where we’re at looking into next year and the year after.”
