File photo – Russell Pascascio

After watching his team lose heavily to the Huskies in boys basketball on Thursday night, Ferndale head coach Tristen Waters described Fortuna seniors Alfonso Medina and Russell Pascascio as “the best duo in the county.”

And it’s hard to disagree as the Huskies rolled to a 72-26 victory and improved to 8-4.

“They have the best duo in the county in those two, and on top of that they are arguably the best team in the county,” Waters said. “And then you add in coach Norm (Sotomayor). The way his teams play every year speaks volumes on how great of a coach he is.”

Medina, who is one of our Humboldt Sports Athletes of the Week, scored a game-high 20 points on 8-of-10 shooting and also had four steals, while the equally impressive Pascascio added 12 points and seven rebounds.

Kallen Barrote also had a good night in the victory and finished with eight points, while Bryson Gillam chipped in seven points and Kobe Spaulding added six points and six assists.

The Huskies led 32-19 at halftime and pulled away with 31 points in the third quarter as the Ferndale players got into foul trouble and the Fortuna guards began to take control with their transition offense.

Fortuna held the Wildcats to six or less points in each of the final three quarters.

“We got flat out beat by Fortuna,” said Waters, who added “They manhandled us with their defense and turned that into easy transition buckets.

“I take full responsibility for our second half performance and I will make sure we focus on playing a complete four quarters.”

In fairness to the Wildcats, they are well behind the rest of the H-DNL in terns of preparation this season because 10 of their 12 players were still playing football until a couple of weeks ago as the school made an historic deep playoff run that resulted in a state championship.

The Cats have managed just five practices so far.

File photo – Alfonso Medina

“Being so far behind the section is hurting our start,” Waters added. “You can see our lack of practice when we try to run our offense.”

Thomas Fergison competed well in the loss and finished with nine points, all of them on first-half 3-pointers, while Prescott Langer added six points.

The Wildcats, who dropped to 2-6, were missing influential sophomore playmaker Braeden Rice.

Earlier in the week, Ferndale fell 42-20 to Sonoma Academy.

Rice scored a team-best seven points, while Henry Westfall had four blocks and two points and led a spirited defensive performance against the No. 7 ranked Division-5 team in the state.

“I’m impressed with our early-season defense, but it still needs to get better,” Waters said.

The Wildcats played that game without Fergison, who Waters described as “our best shooter.”

The strong defense was evident at times again against Fortuna.

“I was pleased with our half-court defense, because we did well holding them, we just had a lack of transition defense,” Waters said. “Turnovers are the big issue in the second half.”

The Cats will try to turn things around before they tip off league play early in the new year.

“We have all the adversity in the world stacked against us right now, but we are up for the challenge,” the coach added. “We will compete game in and game out. It’s time to turn our competitiveness into a complete four quarters and go on a run.”