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Not quite enough
Published 1:25pm Saturday, January 16, 2010It was a tale of two halves when the Fergus Falls boys basketball team squared off against Brainerd Friday night in a Central Lakes Conference contest.
Unfortunately for the Otters, their half wasn’t quite enough.
For the first 18 minutes, the Warriors thoroughly out-played and generally overwhelmed Fergus Falls with their relentless full-court pressure, building a 26-point halftime lead.
But instead of throwing in the towel at intermission, the Otters came out on a mission, pulling within nine points late before coming up just short, 77-67, in front of a boisterous home crowd at Fergus Falls Gymnasium.
So what did the Otters do at halftime to turn things around?
Nothing really.
“There was no panic at halftime,” Fergus Falls assistant coach Denny Hystead said. “We just went over a lot of the same things we did during pre-game. Our main focus was that we wanted to break the press and stay disciplined. We honestly didn’t do anything new. We were just sick of being down.”
After turning the ball over 16 times and struggling to simply get the ball across the halfcourt line in the first 18 minutes, the Otters chipped into the Warriors lead at the beginning of the second half, generating 12-2 scoring spurt in the first five minutes.
After trading baskets for the next nine minutes, Fergus Falls drew within single digits for the first time since the 12:01-mark of the opening frame when Darin Stanislawski capped a 10-2 scoring spurt with his second consecutive 3-pointer. In all, the 6-foot-4 senior registered half of his 16 points in the run.
“Darin was feeling it,” Hystead said. “He wanted the ball for sure and then he got in that comfort zone. Without being vocal about it, he stepped up into a leadership role tonight.”
The final surge simply wasn’t enough, though, as Brainerd converted 3 of 4 free throws in the final 1 minute, 18 seconds and held the Otters without a field goal until Zach Rengel’s uncontested lay-up at the buzzer.
Spencer Kidder tallied a team-high 23 points for the Otters, most of which came in the first half. Rengel added 10 points and Nick Risbrudt handed out nine assists and pulled down a team-high five rebounds.
Fergus Falls finished 4-for-9 from the stripe in the final 4:19 and turned the ball over five times in the span.
Attacking from end-to-end, the Warriors dictated the tempo and threw the Otters out of rhythm right away, mounting an 20-10 lead before blowing the game open with a 20-3 scoring surge that made it 41-13 with 4:08 on the clock.
At that point, the Otters had 12 turnovers and allowed 16 second or third chance points.
“The turnovers hurt, but we felt as coaches that Brainerd was getting us to go faster than we were comfortable with,” Hystead said. “That caused us to rush a number of shots and miss some open looks early on.”
In the first half, Fergus Falls botched two uncontested lay-ups and missed several point-blank shots.
Brainerd — which finished with a 33-21 rebounding edge — shot 24-for-44 in the first half and just 10-for-34 in the second.
Fergus Falls head coach David Rund was unavailable for comment.
