Elk Mound crushes Colfax to stay in second place in conference

With balanced scoring which included points coming from all over the floor, the Elk Mound boys took an early lead and continued to build on it on their way to a 58-42 win over Colfax Jan. 14 on the Vikings’ home court. The win gave the Mounders a 7-2 overall record and 4-1 in Dunn-St. Croix Conference play for sole possession of second place behind Durand, while Colfax moved to 3-7 and 2-3 in conference play. Earlier in the week, Colfax broke a three game losing streak with a 60-52 home win over Eleva-Strum.

Both teams missed on their first three point attempts of the game but after that the Mounders found the range when Cole Tyman drained a trey and Ben Lambele hit back to back triples for a 9-0 lead. Kedar Davis finally put Colfax on the board when he took a dish from brother Aliymu Davis who stole the inbounds pass, but Lambele scored from an offensive rebound to make it 11-2. Elk Mound’s Chandler Schreiber found his sweet spot and canned a pair of treys with the Vikings’ Alex Knudson draining his own in between to make it 17-7, then it was 21-7 after Colin Svee and Dane Lew both scored on layups. It looked like it was going to be a shoot out from long range when Brett Prince hit for Colfax, then Jacob Larson scored from under the hoop to get the Vikings to within 10 at 22-12 but the Mounders went on a seven point run which ended with Brandon Bohl’s triple.

Prince stopped the bleeding with his second shot from behind the arc with just over three minutes left in the half but Schreiber drove the lane for a bucket. It was then the Vikings’ turn to put a streak together. Forcing Elk Mound into several turnovers, Larson scored on a put back, Prince swiped the ball and scored on a layup and George Scharlau dropped in a three pointer to keep Colfax in the game with the Mounders leading 31-22 at the half.

“I told our boys at halftime we had weathered a storm pretty well,” Colfax coach Garrett Maas said. “We gave up nine rebounds and had nine turnovers but were just down by nine points. We knew we were still in the game but we had to fix those things if we were going to hang with Elk Mound the second half.”

Andrew Harmon drew the Vikings closer as he started the second half with a shot from long range, but yet again Elk Mound responded with another scoring spurt on a layup by Svee, a put back from Tyman and another deuce on a drive by Alex Hollister for a 37-25 advantage. Kedar Davis scored off a steal and end to end layup to get Colfax within nine, down 39-30, but otherwise the Mounders zone defense was trapping the Vikings in the corners and not letting them anywhere near the hoop. Both Davis brothers were in foul trouble midway through the second half and after Lew canned a couple of free tosses, the Mounders were up 44-30. Harmon hit another trey to trim  it to 44-33 and Isaac Lee gave the Vikings more hope when he scored on a twisting layup with just over seven minutes to go, but Hollister countered with his own deuce from the paint for a 46-35 Mounder lead. With coach Chris Hahn rotating nine players throughout the contest, the Vikings, playing pretty much with six players couldn’t get any closer than nine points the rest of the way. Lambele and Prince traded three pointers and Lew pulled down an offensive rebound to score while Tyman finished the game off with a baseline drive.

“We came out and we were focused from the start,” coach Hahn said. “We found the open players and shot really well the first 15 minutes of the game but we struggled right before the half and gave up some points. When we are selective in our shot attempts we convert at a much higher level. We are playing some solid basketball now and getting a lot of contributions from a lot of different guys and it is nice to have team balance,” he added.

The Mounders finished with eight triples in the contest and were 4 of 8 from the charity stripe. Lambele and Schreiber both scored 14 points to lead the team. Colfax connected for seven treys and were 3 of 8 from the foul stripe with Prince scoring 11 points and Larson 10.

ELK MOUND (58) Lambele 5-1-2-14, Schreiber 6-0-0-14, Tyman 4-0-0-10, Lew 3-2-2-8, Hollister 2-0-2-4, Svee 2-0-0-4, Bohl 1-0-0-3, D. Black 0-1-2-1

COLFAX (42) Prince 4-0-0-11, Larson 4-2-5-10, K. Davis 3-1-2-7, Harmon 2-0-0-6, Knudson 1-0-0-3, Scharlau 1-0-0-3, Lee 1-0-1-2

THREE POINTERS: Lambele 3, Prince 3, Tyman 2, Schreiber 2, Harmon 2, Bohl 1, Knudson 1, Scharlau 1

Colfax vs. Eleva-Strum

It certainly was a tale of two different teams from the first half to the second half when the Vikings squared off against the Eleva-Strum Cardinals out of the Small Dairyland Conference Jan. 12. The first half ended with the Vikings down 25-24 after they came back from deficits of five and six points. Colfax was unable to find any consistency on the offensive side as after every shot they made, they followed up by having one or two empty possessions. After Harmon scored on a putback to make it 7-7, the Cardinals scored the next five points before Lee hit a short jumper. A pair of free throws by Aliymu Davis, followed by his under/over layup and two more free tosses made it 25-21 and Knudson’s trey allowed the Vikings to enter the break down by just a point at 25-24.

“That was a huge two minutes just before the half for us,” Maas said. “It gave us some momentum for the second half.”

Prince and Kedar Davis put on a scoring show early in the second half with Prince driving the baseline, Davis canning a triple, Prince hitting his own trey then scoring on a put back and Davis dropping in two free tosses for a 36-28 advantage. Larson scored on a spinning layup then connected on offensive rebounds twice to up the lead to 43-34. The Vikings continued to score from all over with Harmon driving the lane then hitting a shot from behind the arc, Aliymu Davis hit two freebies, scored in the paint, and stole the ball and finished off a layup for a 53-37 Colfax advantage. With around three minutes left, the Cardinals began to foul and they found out who you don’t want at the charity stripe as Kedar Davis went 4 for 4 and Knudson finished the game off with his own two free tosses.

“We did a lot of the little things like making the extra pass and communicating tonight,” Maas said. “Our help side defense was much better then it has been and we didn’t give up an offensive rebound in the second half.”

The brothers Davis combined for 27 points to lead the Vikings and the team was 15 of 22 from the foul line.

COLFAX (60) A. Davis 5-5-6-15, K. Davis 2-6-7-12, Harmon 4-0-0-10,Larson 3-2-3-8, Prince 3-0-0-7, Knudson 1-2-2-5, Lee 1-0-2-3

ELEVA-STRUM (52) D. Severson 5-5-6-16, M. Higley 4-1-1-11, B. Moen 5-0-0-10, C. Kunferman 4-0-1-9, T. Engen 2-2-2-6

THREE POINTERS: Harmon 2, K. Davis 2, Higley 2, Prince 1, Lee, 1, Knudson 1, Kunferman 1, Severson 1

Elk Mound vs. Elmwood-Plum City

Two days after the Mounders pounded the Vikings, one of the two defending conference champions, Elk Mound, destroyed the other conference champion Elmwood-Plum City 80-43.

The game was relatively close through the first half with the Mounders up 39-23 led by Lambele’s 11 points while Dylan Black added seven and Bohl six on his two triples. The second half belonged to Tyman who drained four treys to give him five for the game and 19 points while Lambele continued to pound the paint for three buckets and a game high 20 points. All told, Elk Mound combined for 11 shots from downtown and were 13 for 16 at the charity stripe

ELK MOUND (80) Lambele 7-5-5-20, Tyman 7-0-0-19, Black 3-2-2-9, Svee 3-2-2-9, Lew 2-3-4-8, Bohl 3-0-1-8, Pritchard 2-0-0-4, A.Hollister 1-1-2-3

ELMWOOD-PLUM CITY (43) C. Leija 5-3-5-13, S. Hoyt 3-0-0-8, H. Schoenworth 3-1-2-8, D. Nelson 3-0-0-7, L. Bauer 3-1-2-7

THREE POINTERS: Tyman 5, Bohl 2, Hoyt 2, Lew 1, Svee 1, Lambele 1, Black 1, Schoenworth 1, Nelson 1