Sports
Jacks season has been a thrill ride
Tyler Ohmann
12/06/2011
If anyone wants to know what it feels like to ride a roller coaster they might ask the Dakota College at Bottineau men’s basketball team how it feels.
The Jacks have been up at home (4-0) and down on the road (1-7). The trend continued this week as DCB was handled by Turtle Mountain Community College (TMCC) 101-80 in Belcourt on Tuesday and then downed Minot Air Force Base 85-77 on Saturday at the Woodshed.
The week for the Jacks began on Tuesday in Belcourt with a frustrating loss to TMCC.
The Jacks fell behind early and after trailing by nine at halftime did little to remedy that in the second half getting out scored by 12 in the second half. DCB Head Coach Ken Keysor gives a lot of credit to TMCC.
“We need to start off by giving credit to TMCC, they came to play especially Shawn Knife and Brian Lilley,” Keysor stated. “TMCC played an excellent game and we take our hats off to them.”
Knife and Lilley combined to shoot 69 percent from the field and 27 rebounds.
Keysor was not happy with the performance of his starters, though four of them scored in double figures. Cameron Malzer led the Jacks with 17 points; Jayden McMillin and Josh Vedaa each had 12 and Jeremy Chambers finished with 11.
“Our lone highlight was when our starters decided they didn’t really want to play and got down by 22 in the beginning of the second half. We then pulled all the starters and with five new players that haven’t gotten a lot of time this year we got the lead down to nine,” Kesyor stated. “We hoped it would light a fire under the butts of our starters, but obviously by looking at the ending score it didn’t.”
The Jacks shot a poor 42 percent from the free throw line as they hit 14-of-33 from the charity stripe in the loss. TMCC hit nearly 80 percent of their 34 chances at the line.
Overall it was a loss that frustrated Keysor, a low on the ride that has been this season for DCB.
“We are starting over from scratch. We will find out a new starting five, it may turn out to be the same five, but right now my frustration level as a coach is truly at hypertension level,” Keysor stated.
Saturday the Jacks climbed back up the tracks in a trill ride 85-77 win over Minot Air Force Base.
Keysor cites out rebounding TMCC 57-40 as the key to the victory.
“Finally we out rebounded the other team. We really hit the board hard and it was against a physical team,” Keysor stated. “We had talked about not being able to allow teams second chance points while trying to make sure we crash the offensive boards. We believe we accomplished that tonight.”
Sophomore James Odneal led the inside game for DCB with 16 rebounds, he also had 10 points to get his fourth double-double of the season.
McMillin and Malzer had 17 points a piece to lead the Jacks in scoring. McMillin also had a double-double as he hit the glass with 13 rebounds.
Chambers (14) and Vedaa (11) also scored in double figures for DCB.
Despite the victory Keysor is still concerned over a few issues for the Jacks.
“We still have some concerns about the amount of turnovers we have, especially the unforced errors. We are too lackadaisical on ball control,” Keysor stated. “We sometimes throw a soft pass when it needs to be crisp. We will continue to work on our intensity for 40 minutes as we still have minutes where we are content to just take the first shot we see.”
Defense and rotation are also issues Keysor stated that the Jacks need to work on.
Keysor hopes that the win will help motivate the Jacks.
“We’ll take a win as we have been struggling of late and our hope is that we will now start climbing to our potential,” Keysor stated.
With the week split the Jacks stand at 5-7 on the season.
DCB will travel to Bismarck to take part in a tournament hosted by Bismarck State starting on Friday.
The Jacks will finish off their 2011 portion of the season with an 8 p.m. home rematch on Monday against TMCC.