Still hunting their first win of the season, the Parsons Vikings boys dropped all three games of the T-Bird Classic last week.
The Vikings got the closest to a victory on Tuesday with a two-overtime loss to Mulvane, 64-57.
Parsons trailed, 16-6, through the first period before mounting a slow and steady comeback.
Maurian Morton led the Vikings with 21 points on 9-of-17 shooting in the loss.
“When you look at the whole game, we won the second, third and fourth quarters,” Parsons head coach Anthony Houk said. “We just got ourselves in a hole in the first. I’m proud of our guys going on the road in a hostile environment and not quitting. We chipped away the entire game to put ourselves in a position to win. It was heartbreaking to not get the win. It was a valiant effort. But the first quarter is an issue for us right now.”
Hosting a game for the first time on Thursday, Parsons lost to Collegiate, 113-33.
“That score was very truth-telling of how hard that Collegiate team plays on defense,” Houk said. “At the same time, they’ve got a bunch of seniors playing like that. And we have first-year guards going against that at the varsity level. We knew it might be tough. But I didn’t know it’d be like that.”
While the Vikings are one of the youngest teams in Class 4A, Houk felt his squad could’ve shown better fight with their approach on the glass.
Collegiate outrebounded Parsons, 43-17.
“When you’re going against a tough roster like Collegiate, you can’t give up 20 offensive rebounds in the first half,” Houk said. “That’s what we did. When they have all the weapons that they do, we can still box out. We didn’t do that well enough. It wasn’t even close.”
Morton again led the Vikings with seven points with Deshawn Pleasant matching the effort.
Collegiate connected on a blistering- hot 57.8% of its shots, including 11-of-29 3-pointers. AJ Batiste led Collegiate with 24 points.
On Saturday, the Vikings lost to Circle in Towanda, 59-44.
Stats were unavailable for Saturday’s game at press time.
“What we have to do with this inexperienced group is, before we win, we have to rep winning plays,” Houk said. “Boxing out isn’t a flash play. But we have to do that when we give up so much height. It sounds elementary. But it’s a part of winning.”
Up next
Parsons hosts Fort Scott on Tuesday to open SEK League play.
“We have a young group that’s working hard and is coachable and is fun to be around,” Houk said. “We’ve just got to navigate through the forest a little bit.”
