With his eyes on the basket, Rory Bakke slid by the Two Harbors’ defender to score 2 of his 12 points against the Agates in a game the Vikings lost 49-14.
With Cook County’s best overall player Jamie Wick sitting on the bench for most of the first half because of foul trouble, the Two Harbors Agates built a big lead against the young Vikings and never looked back in their 49-14 win.
Although it wasn’t on the schedule, the game was played in Grand Marais on Thursday, December 11. Cook County High School Athletic Director Pam Taylor described it as a make-up game.
Two Harbors’ defense, said Head Coach Pat Eliasen, gave the Viking offense fits.
“We started the game very slow. Our offense never kicked in and we had problems against the ball pressure again,” he said.
The Vikings were tentative to shoot even when they did have open looks and when they did shoot they often misfired.
“Offensively we were sluggish in the first half. We only scored 6 points in the first half and finished with 14 for the game,” Coach Eliasen said.
Two Harbors led the Vikings 33-6 at the halftime break.
Afterwards Coach Eliasen said, “We need to find a way to score points and enter the game with more energy and focus. On a more positive note, we held Two Harbors to only 16 points in the second half so we can play defense when we want to.”
Another positive for the Vikings was the emergence of Rory Bakke as a scorer. The point guard scored 12 of the Vikings’ 14 points.
Trial by fire at Mountain-Iron Buhl
Coach Eliasen said his team’s trip to play the Mountain-Iron Buhl Rangers highly ranked boys’ team was a trial by fire.
“We played MIB on December 15 and took a heavy loss. To put it in a nutshell, we played OK on defense but we need to get better.
“We were pressed the entire game and we hurt ourselves immensely with turnovers. We attempted to run several offenses and when we were able to run them without giving the ball up, we scored,” said Eliasen.
Archie Winans led MIB with 25 points. The Rangers took a 49-17 lead into halftime and never looked back, beating our Vikings 84-35.
“Defensively we played man-to-man most of the game and that will be our primary defense throughout the year. We have played zone to attempt to minimize fouls because of the low bench numbers but man-to-man is our strength,” Coach Eliasen said.
Once again junior point guard Rory Bakke led the team in scoring with 15 points. Jamie Wick 10, Marcus Logan 4, Sam O’Phelan 2, Andy Farley 2, and Jerod Spry 2, completed the scoring for the Vikings. The Vikings were 8 of 14 from the foul line and committed 10 fouls on the night.
Coach Eliasen said, “We have the talent and the intelligence to do the job but we’re missing that special part that comes from inside that drives us to be the very best we can be at our respective positions. There are glimmers of it so I know it exists. We need to find a way to tap into it and begin playing as one unit.
“We’ll get there and then this team will surprise people. We also need to start thinking about off season workouts and strength training. It’s obvious that the other teams in the conference have strong off-season programs. We started a five day per week program last summer and a handful of athletes attended but we need that number to grow if we want competitive athletics in Cook County again.”
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