It's Showtime For Horns At The Arena

After their hard-fought third place showing in the WTC tournament and a Feb. 6 game at Pine Bluffs, the Kimball Longhorns enter a late-season stretch of home games at The Arena.

Venturing to K-Town are Hemingford on Friday, Feb. 9, Minatare on Feb. 10 and Mitchell on Feb. 16.

The Longhorns will have redemption on their minds in the Mitchell showdown.

The Kimball boys went 2-1 in the WTC – easily handling Bayard in their opener, losing a nailbiter to the formidable Mitchell squad in the semifinal round on Groundhog Day, and beating Morrill comfortably to take third place.

Before last night's game across the state line in Pine, Kimball was 11-7 on the season.

Here's a look at the team's WTC journey.

Kimball 71,

Bayard 31

Feb. 1

This past week saw our boys compete in the Western Trails Conference tournament and started off with a home contest versus Bayard. This was our first time hosting in the 1st round of the tournament in quite some time and it was nice to be able to compete in front of our home crowd.

The game started slow in the beginning with us having a difficult time finding our rhythm. However, approximately midway through the 2nd quarter we were able to get some defensive turnovers resulting in transition points and a 20-10 lead. Kyler Lusche put down his second dunk of the season and from there our players seemed to take over the game. All but two of our players saw themselves in the scoring column with Brandon Paxton and Kyler leading us once again with 20 and 17 respectively. Braxton Miller (8), Ryker Behrend (7), Trevor Fuss (5), Wyatt Cords (4), Bransyn Kiefer (4),Landon Norberg (2), Kaymen Lusche (2), and Trey Cook (2). As a Team we recorded a very high efficiency rating of 1.86, made 11/15 free throws, and ended with 48 points in the paint.

Mitchell 48,

Kimball 47

Feb. 2

In the semifinal round we took on a talented Mitchell squad that had 12 wins on the season, so we knew we would be in a battle and need to play good, sound basketball.

Their point guard seemed to be getting downhill to the rim on us with his quickness and making tough finishes around the rim. Brandon Paxton got into foul trouble early, so it was difficult for us to find any consistency to where we could pull away with a lead in the first half.

Down 26-22 at the half we came out stronger in the third holding our opponents to just 6 points and taking a 4 point lead of our own into the 4th. The beginning of the 4th saw more back and forth until we were able to score on 4 straight possessions and Ryker Behrend hitting a three pointer to put us up 8 points for our biggest lead of the contest.

Unfortunately they came immediately back to hit a three of their own to stop our run and take our lead back to 5. The last part of the game saw our team struggle to get the ball inside and see our opponents go on an 11-2 run to finish the game and snatch the victory from us 47-48.

Both teams played hard. We committed a season low 6 turnovers. However, in the end we did not shoot the ball particularly well shooting just 34.7% from the field and 53% from the line.

Fortunately for us we got to play another game the very next day and we play Mitchell again for our last home contest of the year, possibly competing for a regular season conference championship.

Scoring was led by Kyler Lusche with 17 points. Wyatt Cords had a good shooting night going 2/3 from deep and 6 points. Ryker Behrend ended with 9, Braxton Miller 7, Brandon Paxton 4, Trevor Fuss 3, and Bransyn Kiefer 1.

Kimball 56,

Morrill 31

Feb. 3

You never know just how a team will respond after a heartbreaking loss from the night before, but our players responded well against a much improved Morrill team that had 13 wins on the season.

Getting up and cheering on our Lady Longhorns in the 11a.m. game I think helped increase our endorphin levels and bring back a much needed vibe going into the 3:30 contest.

Morrill has a lot of height and length that they utilize well so we wanted to try and match that with putting Kyler out front of our zone and see how well they could handle being trapped up top.

The strategy paid off as we were able to hold Morrill to just 5 points in that 1st quarter of play. Morrill thade some adjustments and tried to move around their length, however, their 6'5" player ended up in foul trouble due in part of trying to block Kyler and Brandon every time they got a shot inside.

Points in the paint were not easy to come by with Morrill having shot blockers of their own. However, we were able to make adjustments of our own to get more open looks and end up with 36 of our 56 inside the paint.

Brandon Paxton came back with a huge 24 point 17 rebound evening along with Kyler Lusche's 17 points and 8 rebounds. Wyatt Cords was good shooting from deep again going 2/4 from beyond the arc and getting a nice drive and finish for his 8 total points. Braxton Miller added 4 points and a team high 9 assists while Bransyn Kiefer hit one from deep to get his 3 points on the evening. Ryker Behrend and Trevor Fuss played significant minutes for us and they did a great job defensively keeping Morrill's perimeter players at bay.

As a team we kind of struggled from the field with 40.7% FG% but did an excellent job of holding our opponent to only 22.4% from the field. We also shot a great 81.8% (9/11) from the line and pulled a 42 to 26 rebound advantage. Holding our opponent to only 12 points in the paint was also a big accomplishment due to their height and length.

All in all I thought our team played very hard throughout the tournament and we can look forward to our final stretch of games coming up here in the next few weeks. With 11 wins on the season we achieved one of our goals by improving on the win total from last season and will look to improve on that total with 1 away game in Pine Bluffs and three consecutive home games versus Hemingford, Minatare, and a Mitchell rematch Feb. 16th.