“Had Detroit Lakes in town tonight,” reported Barnesville Head Coach Matt Askegaard. “What a fun first half of basketball. We ended the half down 2, but it was exciting. Both teams hitting shot after shot and pushing the ball each possession making it a fun brand of basketball to watch. It seemed like neither team could miss.  The second half was another story. The shots for DL continued to fall, but not for us. In fact, all 3 levels for DL shot very well tonight. There were times I thought we were going to get them to tire, and a few times we did, but they were just better than us in the second half.”

Gannon Bolgrean was the scoring leader for Barnesville with 24 points and Wyatt Suter joined him in double digits with a dozen.  Tate Inniger added 8 points and a team high 7 rebounds, while Carson Hagen had 9 points and led the team with 4 asists.

“When we needed to show patience offensively in the 2nd half, we forced shots,” said Askegaard. “That is part of the learning process. We have given these guys a great amount of freedom to make decisions on their own. They are being very aggressive and as coaches we love that. However, there are times when we need to get the highest percentage shot and not panic. We also got into some foul trouble as well and that just compounded things.

Barnesville is now 6-2 overall, 2-1 in the conference. They head to Pelican on Tuesday, Minnewaska on Thursday and host DGF on Saturday.