LENA — Monroe head coach Brian Bassett could only sit at the end of his bench and wonder “Why?” and “How?” as the final seconds ticked away after his team’s 36-25 loss to Lena-Winslow in a nonconference border battle Dec. 1.

“I don’t even know what to say,” a frustrated Bassett said after the game. “Coach (Jerry) Tordoff said it best, we are playing very soft right now. The way I look at it is we have guys that are way to hesitant on everything we do. 

“We don’t look like this in practice, and I don’t yank them out for making mistakes — usually, depending on the mistake. Other than an Aaron Ziolkowski pass to Kade (King) late in the fourth quarter — where he got the ball on the wing and snapped it in to him — it was kind of a stare down and ‘here you go, buddy’ passing type of game. Nobody snapped it anywhere or anticipated what might be open. We were just kind of waiting and hoping something was open.”

The Cheesemakers’ offense was completely stymied by the Panthers zone defense throughout the game. Monroe’s players were hesitant to look into the post, drive to the hoop or put up a shot in the first half. The two teams went into the locker rooms at halftime with Le-Win leading 14-7.

“Everybody was hesitant right away and nobody had that look in their eye that they were going to do something with it. In high school sports there always has to be that guy with a look in their eye that they are going to make some plays, but tonight there wasn’t,” Bassett said. “Usually when we are down in the dumps and need a play (Nick) Schumacher can bail us out, but tonight he was off, too.”

The anemic display of offense was across the board for Monroe, which spent a large portion of the half without senior center Kade King — its most polished player who picked up his second foul with 1:10 left in the first quarter.

King’s absence didn’t seem to matter too much, as outside of his two free throws in the opening period, Monroe only received a 3-pointer from sophomore Cade Meyer two minutes into the game. 

“They ran a pretty tough zone and got physical with us,” King said. “We were a little sloppy. We missed our open looks, but we have to hand it to them, they played tough.”

The Panthers led 7-5 after the first and went up 12-5 after a 3-pointer by Alex Daughenbaugh and a score in the paint by Sam Ormiston. Monroe’s only buck in the second quarter came off the only aggressive play of the half – senior Max Lange had enough of the around-the-horn passing and drove into the lane, only to dish to Meyer, who went above the rim to score with just 1:28 before halftime.

“We just didn’t get into gaps. I’m not sure what we were doing,” Bassett said of the lack of offense.

After halftime the Cheesemakers first appeared to pick up the pace, with Meyer scoring down in the paint just 20 seconds in the third and Schumacher hitting a 3-pointer a minute later to make it 14-12. But the spurt was short lived, and Le-Win held a 23-17 advantage headed into the fourth.

“We were just missing shots. The score looks bad, but we were getting good looks and just missed our shots. We have to keep pushing. We can’t give up on it — we’ve got guys that can put the ball in the hoop,” King said. 

After Monroe later got to 21-17 with 2:47 left in the third, the Panthers rattled off 10-straight points and held Monroe scoreless for over seven minutes and 30 seconds to take a 23-17 advantage with 3:29 left in the game.

The Cheesemakers responded with back-to-back baskets on a score in the post by King and a 3 from freshman JT Seagreaves. As the final minutes ticked away, Bassett and the other coaches furiously attempted to communicate to the players on the court to play a press defense on every inbound as well as to foul to send Le-Win to the free throw line in hopes of getting a quick possession, but the calls went directly to voicemail.

“Nobody took the bull by the horns. We’re just not taking anything away. We’re just sitting back and hoping for the best. We have to start taking things away or else we’re going to be getting crushed by 30,” Bassett said.

King and Meyer each finished with seven points to lead Monroe, while Parker McGee led Le-Win with 12 points. The Cheesemakers were also just 3 of 8 from the charity stripe, while the Panthers finished 6 of 11 as a team.

“We’ve got to put this one behind us. Come Monday we’ve got to find a way to run an offense against a good zone, because I can’t imagine any team is going to look at tape from this game and not run a zone. We’re going to see a lot of zone in the future, so we’ll have to figure out how to break it,” King said.

Monroe picked up a win the night before the Le-Win game, toppling Fort Atkinson on the road 62-46.

King scored 15 to lead the Cheesemakers, while Schumacher had 11 and Meyer 9. Eleven Monroe players scored in the contest.

After trailing 26-25 at halftime, Monroe got a lift when Meyer threw down a slam dunk, which avalanched into a 19-0 Cheesemakers run.

“That’s huge. That feeling, that excitement with your teammates — that’s huge. That’s why we play,” King said.

Monroe (2-2) was scheduled to travel Dec. 4 to Elkhorn before hosting Oregon Dec. 7.