Sports

Braves finish regular season with two wins

By Bottineau Courant Staff

02/07/2012

An 18-1 record and a perfect 7-0 conference record has the Bottineau Braves boy’s basketball team sitting in control of their own destiny as the top seed heading into the District 11 tournament.

The Braves ended their regular season this past week with wins over Drake-Anamoose and St. John to head into the playoffs as the district’s top seed.

The District 11 tournament begins on Thursday in Dunseith.
The score and stats were unavailable from the Drake-Anamoose game. The Braves took home an 81-60 win Saturday afternoon over the Woodchucks in St. John.

Bottineau led the entire way and were up by five after one quarter and 10 at halftime.

Senior Justin McCloud had 29 points to lead the Braves, and also had a spectacular dunk on a break away during the game.

Fellow seniors Mark LaCroix and Devon Grenier also did well, scoring 18 and 16 points respectively.

Senior Matt Bowers added eight points as the Braves captured their 18th win of the year, as many as they had all of last season.

Channing Reed led the Woodchucks with 20 points. Lorne Jay had 18 in the losing effort.

The Braves will play the final game in Thursday’s opening round of the district tournament against Sawyer 25 minutes after the third game of the day.

The top four finishers in the tournament, which will be held in Dunseith, will move on to the Region tournament that begins on Feb. 20. The winner of that tournament heads to represent Region 6 at state.

Bottineau came up short in last year’s Region 6 championship against Bishop Ryan.