The Lancers came in tonight and both teams played hard and physical. The Lancers were led by Jacob Zietz with 23 points and came out with a 12 point win. Late in the ball game we kept exchanging points and repeatedly got to within 7 points, but we just couldn’t get any closer than that. Tonight was really the first night we dealt with the 5 foul rule. Zietz got to the line 7 times in the fourth quarter, for 14 attempts and converted 7 of those. As a team they got to the line 23 times.

Tonight the beavers with were led by Markus Lambert with 23 points & 3 rebounds. After the first quarter I thought we did a better job of going north and south to the hoop and creating shots for ourselves. In a game like this you can think of the costly turnovers, a couple opportunities at the rim that we didn’t score, and a couple spurts of just weaker play and a loss of focus that cost us the game. Markus played a great overall game and mixed up his outside and inside shots often. When he does that, he is very hard to match up against.

Tonight we were called for 19 fouls to General McLanes 7, which I thought was a little inconsistent at times. This makes the game hard especially when Rylan got in foul trouble early. When he went out they went on a scoring spurt, so I had to get him back in the game.

We definitely had some nice looks that didn’t fall tonight, but so did they. They came out on top and were the better team tonight. After tonight’s game I think it gave our guys the confidence to know that if we change some things and possibly see them in the post season that we can play right with them and have a shot at high caliber teams like them. Not only GM, but teams down the road as well.

Something I tried to stress, but we didn’t do a great job at tonight was helping on Jacob Zietz. Our guys guarding him did a good job, but he is a great player and we need others to help and step in more to get the ball out of his hands and make some of the other guys try to beat us more. The offense clearly ran through him, and I feel we can do a better job handling him.

GM is a team that runs 5 guards/forwards, which makes us play a lot of small ball. Rebounding was difficult for us tonight and specifically in the first half we were out rebounded by a good margin. We need to get better at boxing out our guys, and paying attention to fine detail in that area. When GM put in there big guy, we were able to get Ricketts in the game and guard him well, he came down with 2 rebounds.

I thought we played aggressively and did a decent job, with a few lapses in pressure. Karson Chamberlin had the ball in his hands quite a bit of the time in the man to man full court pressure. He played some really good defense tonight and came up with several hustle plays. He finished with 3 points, 2 rebounds, and 2 steals.

Rylan Smith ended the game with 14 points, 6 assists, 4 rebounds, and 2 steals. He led all scorers with 9 points in the first half, and scored 5 in the second. He really did a nice job creating tonight for himself and others. His dribble drive was really strong tonight and he can really look at that tonight and realize he can continue to do that and be extremely effective specifically when they are really guarding his outside shot.

Kamdyn Moon had some really nice 3 point looks tonight. He continues to get a lot of really nice dishes for great scoring opportunities and is starting to create more for himself with that mid range shot he likes. He finished with 8 points and 6 rebounds.

Other key contributors:
Tavon, who played a strong defensive game
Deane, who came in and had a block
Scouten & Albers - who came in for short stints

Next up is our Jim Gruca Christmas Tournament on Dec 28th and 29th. We first play Northwestern at 7:30PM on the 28th.