Sam O’Phelan (inset) drove hard around his Two Harbors defender while Jamie Wick (35) took a deep shot from the corner against the Agates in a contest the Vikings lost.
Seldom does a team meet an opponent twice in the span of eight days, but that’s what the Vikings did when they traveled to Two Harbors on Friday, December 19 to face a bigger, much more experienced Agate team.
The young Vikings lost 67-30, which wasn’t much different than the first score.
“We didn’t rebound well and had a couple of starters out sick,” said head coach Pat Eliasen.
With three eighth graders and two ninth graders making up half of the team, the Vikings can ill afford to have any injury or sick players.
The bigger Agate players got out to an early lead against a young Viking team and the Vikings could never generate enough offense to make a dent in the lead.
While this was a game the Vikings weren’t going to win, it was still a valuable learning experience for Eliasen’s players.
“Marcus Logan started his first varsity game and played tough throughout. We are inexperienced and our inability to score and our turnovers really hurt us. That is a bad combination for any team,” coach Eliasen said.
“On a positive note, we played better man-toman defense and midway through the second half we experimented with our 2-2-1 and three-quarter court trap [defenses]. It went okay for the first time that the guys played it. We got some turnovers but were unable to convert them into points.”
But as Eliasen noted, “We’re getting a little better every week and the coaching staff works the fundamentals every day. We’ll get the level of play back to where we should be but we’re just a young, inexperienced team. The guys are staying positive and fighting through the obstacles, and we’ll surprise some teams coming up.”
For the third game in a row junior guard Rory Bakke led the team in scoring and rebounds with 13 points and 7 boards. Senior co-captain Jamie Wick tallied 8 points and grabbed 6 rebounds while Jerod Spry had 4 points and 3 rebounds, Marcus Logan 3 points and 2 rebounds, and Andy Farley 2 points and 3 rebounds.
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