Despite Will Romberg’s best efforts, the Cook County High School Vikings lost to the Carlton Bulldogs 90-63 on Friday, Jan. 19 in a home game.
Ramberg, a junior forward, scored 21 first half points and ended with 37 for the contest.
Playing with a lot of finesse and hustle, Ramberg battled hard for every offensive and defensive rebound against the bigger Carlton Bulldog team, but it wasn’t enough as the more physical Bulldog players fought through the Vikings’ man-to-man defense to score a lot of easy buckets.
“Carlton just couldn’t miss. That is as hot of team as I have seen,” said head coach Mitch Dorr. “I also thought Carlton did a nice job taking away our three point shot. Our guys have a tendency to rely on the three-point shot and that is what was in their scouting report,” added Dorr.
Carlton led 47-29 at the half, and continued to pour it on for much of the second half.
As for Ramberg, that was one player the Bulldogs couldn’t stop. “I thought Will played a tremendous game inside, but I thought we should have given him the ball even more,” said coach Dorr.
Pete Sutton with 9 points, Jordan Porter with 8, Trusen Gordon with 6 and Adam Dorr with 3 points were the other Vikings to score in the game.
Vikings play Mesabi East
The Vikings faced a tall order when they faced the Mesabi East Giants on Tuesday, Jan. 23.
Mesabi had four players listed at 6’7”, 6’7”, 6’6” and 6’5”. Their guards were both 6’.
Mesabi mixed their defenses up, playing man and then switching to a three-quarter-zone press at times. Behind their defense and inside size advantage the Giants got off to a fairly big lead of 15 points, but right before halftime the Vikings whittled the deficit to 8 points and had the ball for a last-second shot. A turnover, however and a lay-up at the buzzer put the Giants up 10 points at the half.
Coming off the break both teams would go on runs of four to eight points, but the Vikings trailed by as many as 22 points with under five minutes to play. At that point coach Dorr had his team apply three-quarter pressure on defense and the Giants were rattled. And the Vikings went on a run, with Will Ramberg hitting several buckets and Dyami Blackwell and Pete Sutton scoring over the next couple of minutes. It wasn’t enough, but the game was exciting. The Vikings fell by 10 points, 73-63, leaving everything out on the court.
Ramberg’s 38 points led the team in scoring. Blackwell had 10 points; Gordon 9; Sutton 6; and Porter completed the scoring with 5 points
“I was proud of how our kids fought to the end,” said Head Coach Mitch Dorr.
The next home game is Monday, February 5 against Chisholm at 6:30 p.m. Come out and cheer on your Vikes!
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