Poor start to second half opens door for RCW to pull away in 78-56 win
There were times when almost everything was going the Panthers’ way against Renville County West last Friday.
Then there was the second half.
After a competitive first half that ended with TMB facing just a threepoint deficit against a balanced Jaguars team, the Panthers went ice cold, hitting just three of their first 17 field goal attempts of the second half.
That offensive futility allowed RCW to pull away for what turned out to be a lopsided 78-56 nonconference win.
“No matter how well you play defensively, if you can’t knock down any shots … I thought we got pretty good looks, we just didn’t hit many of them,” TMB coach Ryan Kruse said.
The Panthers’ offense runs mainly through its perimeter players, and as TMB has learned the last couple of years, when the threes are falling, they can be tough to beat. The first half proved that, as TMB overcame an early 14-5 deficit by hitting threes in four out of five trips down the court in a span that covered 5-1/2 minutes.
RCW was able to stave off the Panthers, and it regained a sixpoint lead at 31-25 until TMB’s sixth three of the first half — and Connor Lanoue’s third straight — to make it 31-28. Everytime RCW looked ready to pull away, a TMB three kept that from happening.
RCW was up 34-30 before a Jackson Kruse bucket from deep, and then Parker Kline hit his only threepoint attempt of the game to give the Panthers only their second lead of the game at 37-36.
It would also be their last lead. The Jaguars opened the second half with a 15-2 run, as unlike the first half, nothing was falling for the Panthers all of a sudden. They started by missing all but one of their first 10 shots of the half, and things didn’t get any better from there as the misses piled up.
The last time TMB failed to score at least 22 points in a half was last year’s section loss to Murray County Central.
“It’s hard to continue playing hard on the other end when you’re not hitting anything,” Kruse said.
Meanwhile, the Jaguars had their way down low, using their height advantage to continue to rack up points. That height advantage goes by the name Johnathan Driggs, a 6’4” junior with the wingspan of a smallengine plane.
Driggs did plenty of damage in the first half — at one point accounting for seven straight RCW points — and kept it up throughout the entire game as RCW’s half-court game proved to be too much for TMB’s defense to handle. Driggs finished with a game-high 24 points, and also had 11 rebounds and blocked six shots.
“We didn’t do what we were supposed to do on the pick-and-rolls — they were getting the ball right where they wanted to,” Kruse said. “Once they get it there, there wasn’t much we could do. Eli (Lightfoot) a couple times was able to affect his shot. We had to do a better job of getting to our spots earlier.”
Driggs was 10-for-18 from the field, and for the game, RCW shot over 50%, while the Panthers shot just 30% — a far cry from opening night when they shot over 50% from the field.
The Jaguars also out rebounded TMB, 40-29 and had three players score at least 18 points.
TMB (1-1) also had three in double figures, but the numbers weren’t quite as gaudy. Lanoue paced them with 13 points, and Griffin Zick and Jackson Kruse had 12 and 10 points, respectively. Zick also had five steals, as TMB was able to take better care of the ball than its counterparts, which committed 20 turnovers to the Panthers’ 12.
• The TMB B-squad moved to 2-0 with a 36-29 win. Parker Kline led the way with eight points. Talon Brinkley had seven, and Braden Morgan and Jackson Kruse both tallied six. Nolan Carlson snagged 13 rebounds.
RCW 42 36 — 78 TMB 39 17 — 56 RCW
Klaassen 1-2 1-3 3, Novotny 7-12 0-0 18, Ramirez 6-9 4-5 18, Driggs 10-18 3-3 24, Wilson 2-4 0-0 4, Hebrink 1-4 0-0 2, Gullickson 3-5 3-4 9, Rodriguez 0-1 0-0 0. Totals: 30-56 11-15 78. Three-pointers: 7-18. Assists: 18. Rebounds: 40.
Blocks: 8. Steals: 10. TMB
Sanderson 2-4 0-0 4, Zick 4-14 1-2 12, Connor Lanoue 5-15 0-0 13, Xiong 1-7 0-0 2, Kruse 3-13 1-2 10, Kline 1-1 0-0 3, Lightfoot 1-2 1-2 3. Totals: 20-266 6-10 56.
Three-pointers: 10-37 (Zick 3-9, Kruse 3-9, Connor Lanoue 3-10, Kline 1-1. Assists: 14 (Xiong 5, Connor Lanoue 3, Kruse 2, Sanow).
Rebounds: 29 (Sanow 10, Sanders 7, Kruse 3, Xiong 3, Connor Lanoue 3 Lightfoot 2, Zick). Steals: 12 (ZIck 5, Sanow 3, Kruse 2, Sanders, Connor Lanoue).
