Sweet shooting Jamie Wick only scored 3 points against McGregor, but the 6’ junior forward also hauled in team-high 7 rebounds against the Mercuries.
The winless Cook County boys’ varsity basketball team traveled to McGregor on Friday, December 20 to face the 2-3 McGregor Mercs on the Mercs’ home court and came home with an early Christmas present for their fans—a 46-33 win.
“We matched up well with them,” said Head Coach Pat Eliasen. “We’re a young team and they are a young team. We got into foul trouble early. I had to sit Brandon [Curtis] much of the first half because he picked up a couple of quick fouls, and we are still turning the ball over too much, but overall I was happy with the way the kids played.”
Senior center Jonny Jacobsen had another good game, said Eliasen, leading the team in scoring with 14 points and playing a strong defensive game. Junior guard Lars Scannell scored 13 points and had 4 rebounds while Richie Furlong had 7 points, Curtis‚ 6 points, and Jamie Wick ended with 3 points.
“Jamie didn’t score a lot but he led the team in rebounding with 7 boards,” said Eliasen. “We’ve been working in practice on getting backside rebounds and that’s where most of his came from. That was nice to see because that’s been a weakness for us.
“The kids played their 3-2 defense well and we ran in a little 1-3-1 press for awhile to see how that would work. We had a lot of chances to widen the lead but we rushed too many times and had too many turnovers. With four minutes to play and a 10-point lead we were flying down the court with the ball. I called time out a couple of times and told them to slow it down. We have to build our court awareness and pay attention to the game clock and understand how to manage the game better,” Eliasen said.
The team will practice over Christmas break and work on some offensive and defensive schemes. “We will also work on our free throw shooting. We were 9-24 from the free throw line against McGregor and that’s not going to work against a better team,” Eliasen said.
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