thehuskies do the hustel

This time, the Huskies had hustle too.

After losing 74-48 to Wheatland the first time around in BVL play, the Sutter High boys basketball team made the Pirates pay on Friday.

Isaiah Bohmann dropped in 22 points and pulled down 17 boards, and the Huskies defense held the Pirates to eight points in the first half as Sutter shut down Wheatland at home 45-31 in both teams' final game of the regular season.

"(Wheatland) plays an incredible brand of hustle basketball," Sutter coach Bernie DiDario said. "They make up for not having a center — they hustle like nobody's business."

With players like Clint Johnson ready to fling their bodies all over the court for loose balls and a defense ready to absolutely suffocate whoever has possession, the Pirates showed early on the type of play that kept the defending Northern Section Division IV champions in check during the last go-around on Jan 29.

But that changed, quickly.

After settling for outside shots in the first couple minutes of the game, the Huskies started to look to their big man and shore up on defense. Bohmann started to throw his 6-foot-7 frame around in the paint — he scored 11 by halftime — and the defense kept the hot shooting James Trujillo in check.

Wheatland was up 4-2 with two minutes into the game. Nine minutes later, the Pirates were down 16-6.

"We have a big man and we can hustle," DiDario said.

Down 14 entering the fourth, the Pirates, whose faithful flocked the Huskies' gym to make it a near-capacity crowd, managed to make it interesting before dropping off once again.

Trujillo, the team's leading scorer despite being a sophomore, went off. After knocking down a pair of baskets in the third, he hit a fadeaway over Bohmann, stole the inbound pass and added a lay-up to cut the Huskies lead to 10.

It didn't get any closer.

Trujillo swished another pair of buckets to finish with a team high 12 but his smooth stroke wasn't enough to catch up with the Huskies, who received eight points from both Leszek Ratajczak and Ben Eisenbarth.

The solid effort epitomized the Huskies improve play through the second half of their BVL schedule. They downed league champion Gridley and also got past Winters and Las Plumas.

"Second half of league was much better that the first half," DiDario said. "Hopefully that carries some momentum — we'll see."