Horns End Undefeated WTC Regular Season

The postseason is here.

The Kimball boys basketball team – 14-7 with a .667 winning percentage on the season after a sweet win over Mitchell – opened subdisrict play Tuesday evening against a 14-10 Morrill squad at Bridgeport. Kimball was the No. 2 seed and Morrill No. 3. On Thursday, the winner faces the winnter of No. 1 seed Bridgeport and No. 4 Gordon Rushville game.

Friday's rematch with Mitchell was a great game that saw our players execute and have their 3rd most efficient game of the season, with a 1.69 VPS rating as a team while committing less than 10 turnovers for only the third time this season.

The game was to see if we could go undefeated in the regular season versus our Western Trails Conference opponents or if we would end up in up three way tie for the regular season championship. Knowing what was on the line, and that we were playing an opponent that got the better of us last time when we met in the conference tournament, I thought our players stayed focused and played with a lot of heart. They were determined to get our 8th home win of the season and send our seniors out with a W for their very last home game.

At the beginning of the game we know that we wanted to get Landon Norberg into the starting lineup for his last home game as he has been an instrumental part of our program for the past 4 years. Landon had been bothered by an ankle injury suffered at Pine Bluffs that sidelined him from most practices since then so we were unsure if he was going to be able to go at all, but ran out of the tunnel in front of our home fans and was just inches away from getting our first bucket of the game off a play that we drew up for him on our first possession.

After giving up the first 5 points of the contest our players were able to hit on back to back 3 point baskets taking the early 6-5 lead. However, Mitchell came right back with another 5-0 run of their own to take back the lead once again, 10-6. Kyler Lusche hit his second shot from beyond the arc and we were back with in 1.

The rest of the quarter was a battle back and forth with us converting on a Ryker Behrend baseline jumper and a Brandon Paxton rebound and putback in the final minute to put us back up by 1 going into the 2nd quarter.

Bransyn Kiefer started us out in the 2nd quarter hitting a shot from distance and from there we went on a 10-0 run, keeping our opponents scoreless for the first 4 ½ minutes in the quarter and playing some tough defense. The rest of the half was more trading baskets and saw our team take an 11 point advantage going into the half.

In the first 8 seconds of the 2nd half Braxton Miller deflected and dove on the ball for his 3rd steal of the game, setting the tone for just how bad our team really wanted to come out victorious. Every possession our players hustled for loose balls and kept possessions alive with their determination and grit. We felt pretty good with our effort and 14 point lead going into the final quarter.

However, Mitchell had been coming back in the 4th quarter time and time again and they came out to start the quarter more determined than ever to get back into this one. They converted on their first 4 possessions while we went on a cold spell, cutting the lead down to just 4 points in 2 minutes. Trevor Fuss was able to make a nice bounce pass down to Wyatt Cords with 4 minutes to go to push our lead up to 5 points. From there we held Mitchell to just 3 points the rest of the game while we got the ball inside to Brandon Paxton and finished the final 4 minutes of the game on a 13-3 run.

Individual highlights included Brandon Paxton finishing with 28 points (14 pts in the 4th quarter) and 14 rebounds. Kyler Lusche added 15 pts, 8 reb, & 2 ast. Wyatt Cords hit 2 from deep and ended with 8 pts in his final home contest. Braxton Miller had a very efficient evening adding 6pts, 4reb, 4ast, & 4stl with a team leading 4.33 VPS rating. Ryker Behrend went 4/4 from the free throw line and added 6pts while keeping a lot of possessions alive along with Trevor Fuss. Bransyn Kiefer hit from deep for his 3pts and did a good job of playing defense on the backside, deflecting a couple balls that could have resulted in easy baskets for Mitchell.

All in all it was a good performance from everyone and our team looks forward to going into sub-districts with some momentum. It was great to see our fans come out and support our players and see our seniors play their last home game in front of a great crowd.

Our seniors Wyatt Cords and Landon Norberg have been with us for the past 4 seasons and have seen our team make big strides so hopefully their last home experience along with Brandon Paxton and our foreign exchange students, Matias Sokac and Frances Cagnoni, was a memorable one.

Mitchell JV 57,

Kimball JV 54

The Longhorn Boys JV team got off to a slow start, only scoring 12 in the first half. However, in the second half they were able to come alive and out score Mitchell JV 35-28 in the 2nd half putting the game into overtime. In overtime Mitchell was able to score 10 while we were only able to score 7, but our kids played hard and 3 players were able to score in double figures.

Luke Berger (12), Kaymen Lusche (12), Greg Bingham (10), Trey Cook (8), Matias Sokac (7), & Noe Trevino (5)

This was the last JV game of the season and I am proud to see just how much each of our players has grown throughout the year. This is a good group of individuals that continue to push our varsity in practices and hopefully they will continue to work hard to develop over the offseason as we will be looking to fill some of those minutes at the varsity level left by our seniors.