Sports

Braves dismantle Knights in region joust

By Tyler Ohmann

12/27/2011

Bottineau’s stifling and intense defense created many easy opportunities as the Braves steam rolled Our Redeemer’s 82-57 last Monday evening in Bottineau.

Head Coach Nate Simpson was pleased with the effort from the team, a turn around after last week’s win over Langdon.

“They played hard and I thought we played hard the whole way through,” Simpson said. “I was much more pleased with our effort from start to finish tonight than last week. We have to do that more consistently.”

The Braves started out with a heavy press on the Knights, which led to a 21-point halftime lead. In the second half Bottineau sat back in a half court defense, but Simpson was equally pleased with that defense too.

“I was happy when we went back to our man-to-man defense and we were still able to get up and get rebounds and steals, and push the ball to get easy buckets,” Simpson said. “That is our offense, it starts with our defense; push the ball and get easy buckets.”

Bottineau was led as usual by Justin McCloud and Mark LaCroix. The pair accounted for 55 of Bottineau’s 82 points, but it was the role players that impressed Simpson on the night.

“We need those kids to have good games, and I thought we had a real good game from our role players,” Simpson said.

One of those role players was freshman guard Brock Hiltner, who saw increased minutes and a bigger share of the ball handling duties. A thing that Simpson is happy to see.

“It’s nice to have Brock. He wants to handle the ball and he does a pretty good job of it,” Simpson said. “He is still young and makes some mistakes, but to be able to do what he did, make some nice passes by getting deep in their defense, it is nice to see.”

“We expect to see more things from him as we go along,” Simpson added.

Simpson hopes others can step up in the ball handling department as well.

“We need more guys who want to handle the ball,” Simpson said. “Him (Hiltner), Justin and Mark are the three kids that really want to handle the ball.”

Bottineau held down their own fort and stalled the Knights leading scorer, Tanner Strand, just enough holding him to 20 points.

Despite besting a region opponent by 25 points to improve to a 5-0 start on the season, Simpson acknowledges that there is still things that need work.

“We crashed the boards and pushed the ball, and that’s our game,” Simpson said. “We have to work on our half court offense a little bit. We looked a little sluggish at times, but I think that will come, as long as we are getting our points off our defense we are going to be ok.”

Overall Simpson thought the effort made for one of the best wins for the Braves this season.

“It was just nice to have a good game at home for once,” Simpson said. “Our offense came from an intense defense and we were intense the entire game instead of for spurts here and there.”

“All in all it was one of our better efforts of the year,” Simpson said.

Bottineau will take part in the Mandan Holiday Invitational beginning at 7:30 p.m., tonight against New Salem-Almont. The Braves are ranked ninth in the state polls, highest of all teams competing in the tournament.

Notes:

•  McCloud is leading Bottineau by averaging 29 points per game for the Braves.
• The senior LaCroix has averaged 21.8 points per game in five games this season.