Sports
Braves start with wins over Bulldogs, Mavericks
Tyler Ohmann
12/11/2012
The Bottineau Braves basketball team knew that this season was going to be a lot different then their region runner-up finish a season ago. And though the Braves have shirked the high-scoring, highlight reel play from a year ago in lieu of a hard-nosed defensive style, it hasn’t affected the outcome of their games as of yet.
Bottineau kicked off their season with two wins in their first week, using dominating defense to earn the victories.
First on Monday the Braves narrowly dispatched Rolla-Rock Lake 33-29 in the season opener. Then on Friday the Braves again showed tough defense in a 49-29 win in their home opener over Mohall-Lansford-Sherwood (MLS).
“We’re playing defense this year, a lot better than last year, not taking away anything from Justin (McCloud) and Mark (LaCroix), but we’re playing with a lot more intensity on D and getting more steals,” said junior Garrett Pollman. “We did a good job rebounding, on Monday we didn’t do too good, but we did get the win.”
First in Monday’s win in Rolla, the Braves fell behind early in the game, scoring only three points in the first quarter.
However, Bottineau rebounded in the second quarter to take a 19-13 halftime lead. After that the Braves led the whole way and wound up with a four-point victory.
Topping the Braves in points was Pollman, who had 13 points. Senior Trevor Wettlaufer had eight and junior Jake Carroll had five.
Jacob Loing was the leading scorer for the Bulldogs with nine.
“The kids are playing hard, but we have got to clean up some things offensively, which is no surprise to us or anybody else, but we’re getting better every day I think,” said Bottineau head coach Nate Simpson.
Bottineau followed up last Monday’s victory with another win on Friday in a 49-29 trouncing of the Mavericks of MLS in Bottineau.
Again the Braves defense and intensity shined, especially early on the game. Bottineau held the Mavericks to zero points in the first quarter, in fact the first basket for MLS came with 6:51 left in the second quarter.
However, the Braves offense spun its wheels a bit and managed only four points in the second quarter to hold on to a 16-12 halftime lead.
“It’s really positive right now, obviously we aren’t scoring a lot of points and we have to focus on defense and rebounding,” Simpson said. “After watching the tape against Rolla, our defense wasn’t that great, and I don’t know if it was that great tonight. I have to watch the film, but one thing for sure is that we rebound well.”
“We don’t give them second chances to get easy buckets,” Simpson added. “That’s been the key to start off the season.”
The second half went much better for Bottineau as Pollman, who finished with 15 points, found his rhythm as the Braves pushed the tempo and out scored the Mavericks 33-17 in the second half in route to a 20-point victory.
“He (Simpson) stressed this week in practice to push it and run the ball, and we’ll run teams out of the building,” Pollman said. “The way we ran it tonight, we were blowing by everybody.”
“That’s one of Simpson’s things, he wants us to go as hard as we can,” Pollman added.
Simpson said that as in the past the Braves always will look to push the ball and try and get easy baskets in transition if possible.
“We want to keep it low scoring, but we still want to take our chances and push the ball up the court and see if we can get easy baskets,” Simpson said. “Now our decision making in transition isn’t the best, and that’s hurting us in spots, but I think that’s going to come with experience.”
“We’re still going to try and push the ball and be picky with our shots, if we don’t have anything good, we’ll pull it back and get a good set in,” Simpson added.
Also providing scoring for the Braves were Carroll and senior Ian Snodgrass, who each added eight points a piece inside. On the outside guards Wettlaufer and sophomore Parker Engelhard each had five points.
MLS’s Blaine Cook had 16 points to lead all scorers.
The win was thanks to an intensity that Simpson preached all week after the narrow win over Rolla on Monday.
“We tried to come out a little more intense tonight,” Simpson said. “I told them that our body language wasn’t that good against Rolla, and our body language was a lot better tonight, which tells me that we had a our head on a swivel, and we were ready to play.”
“The kids came out, and the harder it was for Mohall to score to begin the game, the more intense we got,” Simpson added. “We wanted to hold them to zero.”
Bottineau hopes to continue to improve moving forward and Pollman noticed a few things that they will have to try and correct.
“We’re going to probably have to work on outside shots and taking care of the ball,” Pollman said. “There were some situations where we were careless at the end, but we came out with the win, so it was good.”
The Braves next game is at home on Friday as they host a tough Region 6 opponent in Des Lacs-Burlington. Bottineau beat the Lakers in the semifinals of last season’s region tournament, but the Lakers are regarded as one of the front runners in Region 6.