Another hard-fought game and another close loss… that’s what happened for the ADM boys basketball team last Friday at Ballard, and it is unfortunately becoming a recurring theme.

The Tigers continue to battle and show improvement with each game, but they’re not getting over the hump to collect “Ws,” and head coach Aaron Mager knows that’s difficult for his players to swallow.

“It’s tough.  I think the guys do know that they’re improving, but the losing… it gets hard to validate the improvement when you’re not getting wins on top of that, so it’s tough.”

With just five games left in the regular season, the window for affirming its improvement is closing for ADM.  Coach Mager explains what his team has to be better at down the home stretch.

“I think the one area we need to continue to get better at to get these wins is just the 32 minutes of defense.  We’re still giving up too many points.  I mean, 74 points (to Ballard) in a basketball game in high school is too much.  Our grit, just our overall toughness defensively is not where it needs to be to be a championship caliber team yet, and I guess that’s the area where we need to continue to get after it and focus on.”

Despite the Tigers’ struggles–they’ve dropped six of their last seven contests–you can throw out their record tonight.  The arch-rival Perry Bluejays visit Adel, and Coach Mager and company are eager to avenge their loss to Perry in the teams’ first meeting back on January 7th.  The Bluejays eeked out a 67-61 home win in that contest thanks to 44 points from the backcourt duo of Shammond Ivory and Will Whiton.

Coach Mager says finding a way to slow those two down is the key to an ADM win this evening.