Belle Plaine Coach Justin Northrop gave his assessment of a week in which his Plainsman boys basketball squad won two of three contests.
By Coach Justin Northrop
On Monday the 1st we hosted North Mahaska and had a chance at a little revenge from earlier this year. We had a great offensive game and posted a 75-62 win over the Warhawks. This was one of the biggest offensive outputs of the year and was a bright point for the Plainsmen.
Giving up 62 points was not what we want and a part of the game we must improve on. Kyle Janss had his high game of his career with 22 points. Kyle is a streaky shooter and when he gets going everything seems to go in. He played very aggressive on the defensive end and in turn on the offensive end also. He shot 80 percent from the field and made all four free throw attempts. Ben Ehlen followed Kyle with 20 points and continues to show his offensive skills. He also connect on all six free throw attempts and had a season-high eight assists. Chris Janss rounded out the double figure scorers with 12 points. Chris also led us in rebounding with 14 boards and continues to do a great job leading us in that statistic.
On Tuesday the 2nd we traveled down to Keota to face a state ranked and very tough Eagle team. They came out and showed us why they deserve this ranking and we could not match their intensity. I was more disappointed that we could not step up and contend with their physical play than the final score. They do everything very well and we did not do a whole lot to stop them and lost 84-51.
Keota scored on all but five trips up the floor in the first half. When we can only get five defensive rebounds in a half, that does not bode well for us. Ben Ehlen led us in scoring with 15, followed by Kyle Janss with 10. Seivon Steward had another solid game on the boards with seven to lead the team.
We did have some positive things happen for us though. As a coaching staff we made this a big learning experience and took the loss and change practice the next two days. Defense was obvious the component that we need to be very attentive to and the guys really took to it and got some things worked out. We must play great on the ball defense because of out size and that is what the focus was on Wednesday and Thursday.
On Friday we hosted Tri-County and the practice time really paid off, getting the victory 53-36. As far as a game that the fans really got into, this was probably not the game. We emphasized the defensive end more than ever this year. Trying to keep everything in front of us and quit taking so many chance on the steal was our focus. The guys did a great job keeping to the plan and the final score was an indication of that. The only area that I would like to be more aggressive was on the offensive end. We made free throws down the stretch and that was the difference in the game.
We did not shoot the ball at the rate that we would like and the offensive output suffered because of it. Ben Ehlen continued to lead us in scoring with 13, followed by Chris Janss and Keegan DeMeulenare with 10 each. Seivon Steward had a season high 10 rebounds to pace the team in that stat. Ben Ehlen continued to climb the SICL assist rankings dishing out five assists. As of this game he was one assist behind Brendan Kuesel of HLV in that category.
This coming week we have three home games. We host HLV on Monday and Iowa Valley on Tuesday. We then come back and Sigourney comes to town on Friday. This would be a great week to come to the gym and support these young guys. They put so much of themselves into the program and great fan support is always a big help. Go Plainsmen!
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