Eagles claw Tigers in basketball season debut

The Mountain Home Tigers ran into a buzz saw Saturday night at Capital High School in Boise, losing to the Eagles 71-25 in their season opener.

The aggressive 5A Eagles hacked and clawed -- they were called for 10 personal fouls in the first quarter alone -- their way to a 22-10 first-quarter lead over Mountain Home, and went on a 16-0 run in the second quarter to extend their lead to 40-16 at the half.

A 19-6 Capital advantage in the third quarter made it 59-22 after three. With a running clock for the fourth quarter, the game ended in a 71-25 Capital win.

Despite the lopsided loss, Tigers head coach Brion Bethel saw some positives to work from the game.

"It was one of those games where our guys made some good plays and made some bad plays," the coach said. "But overall, there were some really positives things that we feel good about. We knew Capital was going to be good tonight, and they didn't disappoint us."

Tyler Park led Mountain Home in scoring with eight points. Jarek Schetzle and A.J. Woodruff both scored five, Jose Rodriguez four, Christian Riedel two and AJ Daniels one.

The Tigers shot 19 percent (5/27) from the field and hit only one of six (17 percent) three-pointers. They hit 64 percent (14/22) of their free throws.

In comparison, Capital shot 49 percent (27/55) from the field, hitting seven of 19 (37 percent) treys, and shot 67 percent (10/15) from the foul line.

The Mountain Home Tigers hosted Vallivue on Tuesday night, and travel to Skyview on Thursday night.

"Everybody's going to be tough for us," said Coach Bethel about this week's games. "I rank them all the same when it comes to these 5A schools or 4A schools for us, as we're a young team and we lack experience, so we're going to go out and approach these games like we're playing the number one ranked team in the state and hopefully play them very tough."