Sports

Braves go two for two

By Matthew Semisch

02/10/2015

Ahead of the start of the 2014-15 high school basketball season, high expectations weren’t surrounding Bottineau High.

District 11 was meant to be Rugby and then everyone else, and that’s what’s happened. Bottineau was chosen in the state preseason poll to finish sixth of the seven teams in the district, near the bottom of the list of everyone else.

That hasn’t come to be, however. The Braves wrapped up a fourth-place finish in their district last Tuesday thanks to a 74-60 victory over Sawyer in Bottineau.

The Braves controlled the game throughout, winning each of the first three quarters to open up a comfortable 64-49 lead through the first 24 minutes of play. Twenty-four BHS points in both the first and third quarters were particularly helpful to the Braves’ cause.

“We had good energy tonight,” BHS head coach Nate Simpson said. “We knew that Sawyer was a good team that was going to get up in our face and press, but we also knew there were going to be opportunities for easy buckets if we stayed composed.

“We made some mistakes out there tonight but I thought, as a team, we did a really nice job tonight of staying composed and not letting pressure bother us too much.”

Braves center Jacob Kvernum finished with a team-high 18 points. Not far behind was teammate Parker Engelhard, with 15 points, including three three-pointers in the third quarter.

Engelhard had started the game slowly, being shut out in the first quarter before only posting four points in the second. In the third quarter, though, he started to see more and more shots fall for him.

“Coach just kind of came over to me at halftime and goes, ‘You’re thinking about it too much.’” Engelhard said. “He wanted me to just shoot the ball and not think about it, just do it, and they started falling in the third there and that helped out a lot.”

“Sometimes when I struggle in the first quarter I kind of get off my rhythm, but it’s just good when the coach has confidence in me like he did tonight.”

BRAVES BEAT CARDINALS

Following the home win over the Flashes, Bottineau visited non-district foe Langdon on Saturday. This was a much closer affair than the Sawyer game was, with the Braves defeating Langdon by a 67-64 count.

Engelhard finished Saturday’s game with a team-high 29 points, while Kvernum ended up close behind with 22.

BHS (7-8 overall, 3-3 District 11) visited Dunseith on Monday after press time and will host Mohall-Lansford-Sherwood tonight at 7:30 p.m.