{"id":1317685,"date":"2020-01-14T23:08:01","date_gmt":"2020-01-15T06:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/demons-hoops-teams-open-tough-to-begin-league-stretch\/"},"modified":"2020-01-14T23:08:01","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T06:08:01","slug":"demons-hoops-teams-open-tough-to-begin-league-stretch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/demons-hoops-teams-open-tough-to-begin-league-stretch\/","title":{"rendered":"Demons hoops teams open tough to begin league stretch"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Glenwood Springs sophomore Blake Nieslanik goes up for a shot between a pair of Summit defenders, Andrew Duxbury, left, and Hector Diaz, right, during the Demons’ 54-40 Class 4A Western Slope League opener Tuesday night at GSHS.<\/strong>
John Stroud\/Post Independent<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

When Summit got hot in the 4A Western Slope League boys basketball opener at Glenwood Springs High School\u2019s Spencer-Chavez Gymnasium Tuesday night, Demons senior Mitchell Burt got hotter, leading his team to a 54-40 win.<\/p>\n

Glenwood opened up a 10-point lead early in the second quarter, only to see the Tigers come roaring back with a flurry of 3-pointers to close out the half down just one to the host Demons, 23-22.<\/p>\n

The Tigers grabbed a brief lead to open the third quarter, 24-23, but Burt was having none of that. Better yet, his teammates smelled the kill.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy team got me the shots, I just put \u2018em down,\u201d Burt said of his 15-point solo run, all from beyond the 3-point line, over the course of the next 7 minutes.<\/p>\n

By the end of the third, Glenwood held a 20-point lead and was well on its way to the statement win, improving to 8-3 overall and, most importantly, getting off to a 1-0 league start.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot of seniors this year, and all throughout the league seniors moved on last year, so there\u2019s a big opening,\u201d Burt said. \u201cWhoever comes out strongest first, that\u2019s who has the best chance to come out on top.\u201d<\/p>\n

Demons coach Fred Heisel said the team has been working on coming out of the locker room into the third quarter with more intensity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe third quarter\u2019s been a slow quarter for us all year long. We talked about it in practice last night, and again at half time today,\u201d Heisel said. \u201cSummit came out and played really tough defense, taking a lot of chances out on the wings and denying our passing lanes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talked about exploiting that, and after Mitchell hit that first open shot the other guys on the team saw him heating up and decided to run the offense in a way that provided those open shots.\u201d<\/p>\n

By game\u2019s end, Burt led all scorers with 20 points, including the five 3-pointers. Fellow senior John Iuele had 18 and senior Patrick Young added 11. Summit (4-6, 1-1) was led in scoring by Cameron Kalaf and Nazarie Poliuk, each with 12 points.<\/p>\n

Heisel calls the post-holiday stretch the \u201csecond season,\u201d which has everything to do with getting to the coveted \u201cthird season\u201d \u2014 the playoffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a team that experienced enough and who have been in these situations enough, that they know this how to attack in these situations,\u201d Heisel said.<\/p>\n

GIRLS<\/p>\n

Glenwood Springs 51, Summit 32<\/span><\/p>\n

The Summit Tigers stayed within pouncing distance of the host Demons in the first quarter, as Glenwood built a 15-10 lead. But Glenwood was able to slowly build on that, and was up 33-16 at the half before opening a commanding 20-point lead by late in the third.<\/p>\n

\u201cComing off the game Saturday (a 33-22 win at Grand Junction), we felt like we dusted the rust off\u201d from the holidays, Demons coach Rhonda Moser said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt all starts now, though. Conference play is super important for us to be able to play in the post season, and we have to take every game one step at a time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The Lady Demons also stand at 8-3 overall and 1-0 in league, headed into another league matchup at Rifle on Friday.<\/p>\n

Leading the Demons against Summit was senior Qwynn Massie with 14 points, but every Demon got on the board.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved that it was such a great team basketball game,\u201d Moser said. \u201cEveryone scored, and everyone got some minutes tonight, and I thought we did a good job controlling pace of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Demons teams are at Rifle on Friday, girls at 6 p.m. and boys at 7:30.<\/p>\n

jstroud@postindependent.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Glenwood Springs sophomore Blake Nieslanik goes up for a shot between a pair of Summit defenders, Andrew Duxbury, left, and Hector Diaz, right, during the Demons’ 54-40 Class 4A Western Slope League opener Tuesday night at GSHS.John Stroud\/Post Independent When Summit got hot in the 4A Western Slope League boys basketball opener at Glenwood Springs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1317685","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 16:07:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1317685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1317685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1317685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1317685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}