Niceville offense can't quite find rhythm vs. Sickles

LAKELAND — Not once this season has Kyle Koszuta thought twice about letting one fly from behind the 3-point line.

Hit or miss, the Niceville basketball team’s shooters — for better and for worse — have done what shooters do: namely, continue to chuck it from the outside.

So when Koszuta went into the locker room at halftime of the Class 5A state semifinals against Tampa Sickles having hit on just one of five tries from beyond the arc, the Eagles’ guard knew what he had to do — keep shooting.

“(Coach Jerome Strutchen) doesn’t care about misses,” Koszuta said. “All my shots in the first half were good (shots), they just weren’t going in. I just kept shooting and they started going into the hole.”

It was a pair of 3s by Koszuta in the third quarter that erased what had been a seven-point Sickles advantage and instead gave the Eagles a 35-34 lead with 40 seconds left in the third. Just as importantly, it also signaled to those inside The Lakeland Center that Niceville wasn’t going to simply go away quietly.

“At one point, it seemed like they couldn’t miss,” said Sickles’ guard Reshawn Rembert, whose team did eventually pull out the 56-53 win to advance to the state title game..

That’s how it’s been this season for a Niceville team that has on more than one occasion served as living proof that shooting is, in fact, contagious. After weathering a 5-0 Sickles run to open the game, Niceville finally showed it was ready for the big stage when its smallest player, reserve guard Matthew Cooper, entered the game and promptly hit back-to-back 3-pointers to flip a 16-9 deficit into a more manageable 16-15 hole.

Niceville’s 53 points marked the first time in 12 games that a Sickles’ opponent had reached the 50-point barrier.

“We knew it was going to be a tremendous challenge,” Sickles coach Renaldo Garcia said. “We were very concerned about Kody Williams, he’s extremely good setting up those good shooters and we knew a lot about Hunter (Curtis) and Kyle (Koszuta) making shots. They do it in so many ways … That makes it really tough for you to defend.”

But Sickles did a commendable job. When the final horn sounded, Niceville had managed to hit just 6-of-21 from behind the 3-point line, good for 28 percent.

Despite the struggles, Strutchen applauded his team for remaining true to itself.

“As a coach, you can’t be any more satisfied with the team effort and the consistency the guys have shown all season as far as being a team and playing with the utmost respect for the game and for each other,” Strutchen said.