Jeremy Ratliff
Editor
Friday night, Dec. 4, the Bluejay Boys Basketball team made their 2020-21 season debut at Marshfield; slipping past the Tigers in a 60-59 come-from-behind win.
The Jays trailed 24-26 at the half but came back with a 36-point second-half effort to claim the win.
Senior guard Nathan Woller led the charge for the Jays with 21 points (8/18 FG, 2/7 3-pt, 3/6 FT, 2 ast, 5 reb.) followed by Isaac Sutton with 15 (2/3 FG, 1/1 3-pt, 10/14 FT, 3 ast, stl, 5 reb) and Trenton Lokemoen with 10 points (4/7 FG, 2/3 3-pt, ast, stl, reb.)
First-year head coach Troy Pieper was seemingly pleased with Friday’s results.
“For the first game of the season and with us putting in a new system both offensively and defensively, I am overall pleased with how we played. You expect the first game to usually be a little sloppy at times and it was, we didn’t shoot the ball as well as we normally do especially at the free-throw line where went 18-31,” he explains.
“I’m very proud of the effort on defense. The guys have really bought into the system and executed very well. With the offense struggling for stretches, we needed our defense to hold things down until we could make a run, and we did just that. We were down by nine in the first-half and again fell down by nine n the second-half, but both times we just kept battling and didn’t give up. Tonight was a character win, good teams find a way to grind out wins like that and tonight we found a way.
“Nate Woller had a nice game. Probably not up to his standards shooting wise, but he has been dealing with an ankle injury and hasn’t practiced much. He really showed some toughness tonight, getting pressured full court the whole game and still led us in scoring with 21. Bailey Turrene didn’t shoot it as well as he’s used to but I was very impressed with how he didn’t let that bother him and he kept working hard all night especially on the glass, he finished with 14 rebounds and 7 of those offensive boards.”