After starting off its season with a road victory over Community R-6, the Wellsville-Middletown boys basketball team was setting its sights on bigger and better things at the Montgomery County Invitational Tournament.

Unfortunately for the Tigers, they couldn’t pull off any wins at the eight-team tournament, finishing 0-3 for the second year in a row. W-M, the No. 8 seed, lost to the seventh-seeded New Haven Shamrocks 52-37 in the seventh-place game on Dec. 6 at Montgomery County Middle School.

The Tigers dropped to 1-3. They were scheduled to play a road game against Chamois on Dec. 10 and have games against Missouri Military Academy (Dec. 12, road) and Liberty Christian (Dec. 13, home) to wrap up their third week of play.

After two weeks, W-M has given up 70 points per game and scored 35.5 points per contest. In the Montgomery County tournament, the Tigers allowed 80 points per game and averaged just 27 points per contest.

“We need to work on both sides of the ball right now,” first-year W-M coach Josh Albregts said. “We’re struggling on both sides of the ball, boxing out and playing defense just in general. Offensively, we had some issues with making the open shots and making free throws. That’s something we work at on a daily basis. But when it comes to game time, it doesn’t translate.”

The Albregts era got off to a great start as the Tigers cruised to a 61-40 win over Community on Nov. 26, making it the first time in four years W-M won its season opener.

“We executed perfectly,” Albregts said. “We had shots that were falling. I like to call the home advantage shots, which are the lucky bounces that go in. We built upon that going through the quarters. Setting the tone in that first game was great and everything, but now we have to carry it over.”

The Tigers’ effort against Community didn’t carry over into their first-round game against Montgomery County at the Montgomery County Tournament on Dec. 3. They lost 105-24 to their cross-county rivals. The two teams will square off again on Dec. 20 at the Pink Out Game at W-M.

“Kudos to Montgomery for having the team that they have and having the ability that they have,” Albregts said. “It’s one of those things where whenever you have a smaller school like ourselves, you tend to struggle whenever it comes to the bigger schools that have the ability to do whatever they do in order to create their teams.”

W-M lost 83-20 to Clopton in the consolation semifinals on Dec. 5. The following night, the Tigers stormed to a 13-8, first-quarter lead against New Haven before the Shamrocks went on a 17-0 run that carried into the second quarter and never looked back.

The Tigers lost to New Haven in the seventh-place game of the Montgomery County Tournament for the second year in a row.

“We got off to a great start and then we kind of fumbled it,” Albregts said. “We failed to make free throws. We failed to make a bunch of open shots. Unfortunately, the ball didn’t fall in our favor.”

Senior Cooper Henderson finished with a team-high 14 points, including nine in the first quarter. Senior Gage Marshall scored 13 points, including a basket with 1:36 left in the opening period that gave W-M the 13-8 lead.

Henderson finished as the Tigers’ leading scorer in the tournament with 28 points, followed by Marshall with 23 and senior Jonah Slovensky with 20, including 11 against Clopton. All of them returned from last year’s team that finished with just two wins.

“Kudos to the seniors,” Albregts said. “They’re out there playing their hearts out and everything. No complaints against them.”

W-M will play New Haven again on Jan. 24 at home.