Sports
Braves nearly upset Lakers in region match up
Tyler Ohmann
12/18/2012
The last time Bottineau and Des Lacs-Burlington played in boys basketball it went as expected. The favored Braves smoothly got past Lakers to advance to the Region 6 finals.
That was last year, and expectations changed, but the tenacity between the two teams did not. Though the outcome did, as the Lakers made a second-half comeback to win 58-56 in front of a big crowd at the BHS gymnasium.
This time the Lakers were favored and Bottineau had to be on their best behavior to hang with the state-ranked team.
“I thought we came out prepared, and they weren’t prepared for what we were going to give them, but we gave them a run for it,” said Braves junior Jake Carroll.
DLB didn’t look prepared as Bottineau got out to a quick start, playing strong defense, creating turnovers and scoring in transition. Early on Bottineau took a double-digit lead and led 30-18 at halftime.
“We harped on if we want to be in contention in some of these big games, we have to get off to fast starts,” said Braves head coach Nate Simpson. “I thought we once again did defensively, and I was again happy with our transition offense, we were looking to score more there.”
However, Bottineau knew that a team like DLB wouldn’t stay down long, and expected a run in the second half.
“We talked about at half time that they were going to make a run, they are too good of a team not to make a run,” Simpson said. “So we knew that they would make a run, we just had to stay composed, which I thought we didn’t more than what we did.”
Carroll said the gameplan was pretty clear—stop numbers four and five, Tanner Holte and Chris Duke the Lakers top scoring threats.
“We had to get rid of number four down low (Holte) and make sure number five (Duke) wasn’t shooting outside, that’s all we had to do,” Carroll said. “They just got it around us a little bit.”
They certainly did, erasing the 12-point deficit in less than half the third quarter. Bottineau managed to keep the game close though, and strong offensive rebounding kept them in the game, Carroll was a big part of that, scoring 15 points, many on put backs.
“In practice we just stress pushing the ball and rebounding, we do it for 20 to 30 minutes a day,” Carroll said. “We’re just working on it.”
Simpson felt the same way about the Braves crashing the boards.
“Kids were flying around getting offensive rebounds, which is good,” Simpson said. “Defensively I was pretty happy, we didn’t do as well on defensive rebounding, but they are a team that has a little more size.”
Despite clinging to a lead, the Braves were finally caught by the Lakers in the fourth quarter, and were unable to regain the lead.
“Kids made plays in the first half, and in the second half we got a little sense of urgency and we fell asleep for a stretch offensively and that cost us,” Simpson said. “We had a couple guys get the jitters handling the ball, and they maybe didn’t want the ball as much, and they took the ball out of Garrett’s (Pollman) hands, and he was our only ball handler at that point. We knew they’d make a run, and we responded at times, but eventually they caught us and did a really nice job coming back.”
The game wound up in favor of the Lakers 58-56 as they remained undefeated and the Braves dropped to 2-1 on the season.
“If we play hard and we minimize our mistakes, we can be competitive,” Simpson said. “They played hard, they just had too many mistakes and Chris Duke hit a couple big three-pointers for them and Tanner Holte was a beast inside.”
“He is an All-State player for a reason and those two kids stepped up big for them and we just didn’t have an answer for them in the second half,” Simpson added.
Holte led all scorers with 24 points, while Duke had 21.
Bottineau was led by Pollman, who had 16 points. Other contributors included seniors Trevor Wettlaufer (nine points), Taylor Parisien (seven points) and sophomore Parker Engelhard (seven points).
“Overall, if there is a moral victory, I guess we had a moral victory,” Simpson said. “We’re not happy with that, we wanted the win.”
Bottineau searched for their next win last night, but scores and stats were unavailable by press time.
Next up for the Braves is a game tonight in Minot against Our Redeemers. After that the Braves travel to the Mandan Tournament on Dec. 27-29. Bottineau won the tournament last year.