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Knights Defense leads to playoff win over Bucs

By Craig Olson, 03/09/24, 9:30PM CST

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The West Central Area Knights used a stifling defense to take a 40-14 lead and led 42-18 at the half enroute to a 71-45 win over the Border West Buccaneers on Saturday afternoon at Minnewaska Area High School in Glenwood.  

"Border West has been playing really good basketball lately and we didn't play that well vs them last Friday. We gave the kids a challenge on things we needed to do better today and they were really dialed in on the game plan and executed it well," said Knights Coach Kraig Hunter.  "We contained dribble penetration much better today as a team, contested 3-point shooters better and most of all our rebounding effort was solid today.  Border West is always a scrappy, physical team and today we out-rebounded them 39-25. Our hustle plays sparked us several times on runs."

 

Mitch Dewey was one of the leaders in the defensive effort with 6 steals to go along with 11 point, 5 rebounds, and 4 assists.  Nasir Dotts led the team in assists with 5 and was also key in the defensive effort with 4 steals, 7 rebounds and added 2 points. Ben Bye completed a double double with 13 points, 10 rebounds and added 2 steals. Bryce Kjesbo had a team high 15 points including three 3-pointers, along with 4 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 steals.  Cash Nelson was also in double figures for the Knights with 12 points and added 2 rebounds.  Sam Hanson had 8 points, 5 rebounds, and 3 assists; Marshall Dewey added 6 points, 3 rebounds and 3 assists; Cam Anderson had 4 points, 3 assists, and 2 rebounds.

Scoring for the Buccaneers were Holden Rinke with 17, Kyle Kremer 12, Jack Siegel 9, Gunnar Hoffman 3, Nolan Wilson 2 and Brock Vipond 2. 

Tough game today, we weren’t able to handle the pressure WCA put on us. We played hard in the second half and settled in but too big of a deficit to come back from.

"Very proud of our team and this season," commented Border West Head Coach Jordon Roos. "We graduated 12 seniors last year and had very little experience returning. So to accomplish what we did was very impressive by this crew. We competed in almost every game the whole season, very few games got out of hand. Finished in the top half of the conference, and won a playoff game to get to the neutral site in playoffs. It definitely took some time and had some road bumps along the way as we tried to figure out our completely new team, but we really did finish the last several weeks of the season playing our best basketball which is what you always hope for."

Border West ended up with a final record of 12-16.

The Knights (25-3) will take on Belgrade-Brooten-Elrosa (20-8) on Wednesday night at 7:00pm in Glenwood for the South Sub-Section Championship.