David Bergstrom gets ready to feed the ball to Dylan Quaife (10) while Ryan Martinson (3) looks over the shoulder of the McGregor player guarding Bergstrom. Despite playing an excellent game, the Vikings lost in the last seconds to the Mercs, who are top seeded team in the conference.
McGregor came into the Vikings’ gym on Friday, Feb. 4 sporting an 18-2 overall record, and 9-2 record in conference play. The Vikings had a 9-7 overall record and were 5-4 in conference.
Only Esko and Moose Lake have better conference records than the
Mercs, and they are class 2A schools.
But on this night the records were thrown out, and the game became a tale of two halfs.
The first half belonged to the
Vikings. They shut down the Mercs’ high scorers with tough man-to-man defense and took care of the ball well enough to build up a lead. Colin
Everson hit a couple of big 3-point shots for the Vikings to keep the Mercs from completely shutting down the lane, and on defense Ryan Martinson,
David Bergstrom, Dylan Quaife, Kale
Boomer, and Everson played to near perfection, holding the high scoring
Mercs to 8 points.
The Vikings led 17-8 at halftime.
But McGregor came out of the break and started pressing the
Kale Boomer, just a sophomore, has done an excellent job at point guard for the Vikings this year. Kale is a head’s up player who makes good passes and seldom loses the ball on the dribble.
Vikings. This resulted in the Vikings turning the ball over 12 times in the last nine minutes.
For the game, the Vikings ended up with 22 turnovers.
“Bottom line, we didn’t score a point in the final three minutes,” said
Head Coach Mitch Dorr, adding, “In the final three minutes we took too nmany quick shots and didn’t execute our press break.” d Near the end of the game, the officials h missed a call on a kicked ball outof bounds. The ball should have gone to the Vikings, but was awarded to the Mercs. But, as Dorr said, “The official’s call on the kicked ball was tough, but there were any number of plays that would have overcome that. We need to get better at finishing the final five minutes of each half. I am very proud of our guys. We need to keep our focus on getting better for the playoff stretch,” Dorr said.
Everson and Quaife led the Vikings with 11 points each. Martinson scored 7 and Boomer and Bergstrom each chipped in 6 points. Everson finished with three 3-point shots.
Back on winning track
Valentine’s Day is a great day to repair broken hearts, and the Viking thumpers were in need of mending after the one-point heartbreaker to McGregor. A trip to Wrenshall to face the Wrens was all the Vikings needed, as they took care of the ball and took care of the Wrens, winning 65-27.
“Wrenshall is just a very, very young team filled with sophomores. With that being said, we really came out and played well,” said Coach Dorr.
“We played man-to-man defense and our guys really played well. It was a good feeling after the McGregor game. Our goal was to attack the basket and Dylan Quaife and Ryan Martinson did just that,” added Dorr.
Bergstrom led the Vikings with stellar all around play. “David was relentless on defense with eight steals which led to many baskets,” noted Dorr.
The Vikings jumped two spots in the conference, up from 8th to 6th place.
Martinson led all scorers with 21 points. Bergstrom regained his scoring touch and netted 17 points while Quaife hit for 15. Boomer had 7 points and Everson and Will Petty had 2 points. Freshman Johnny Jacobsen added one-point in the contest, but has provided the team with a muchneeded spark off of the bench with his fine rebounding.
“Overall, from start to finish, we played a pretty complete game,” said Dorr.
The Vikes face Barnum at Barnum on Feb. 25 and end the regular season playing Two Harbors at Two Harbors on March 1.
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