Three days after a 30-point home loss to Bonduel, it was gut-check time for the Wittenberg-Birnamwood boys basketball team.
Mission accomplished.
The Chargers headed to Iola on Jan. 9 for a Central Wisconsin Conference-East matchup with Iola-Scandinavia and returned home with a 56-41 win over the Thunderbirds.
Not only did the team snap its two-game losing streak after opening the season with seven straight wins, it also kept pace in the conference standings with Bonduel.
The game was the first for Wittenberg-Birnamwood since the Chargers ended up on the short end of a 67-37 loss to Bonduel on Jan. 6 that kept the Bears undefeated and on top of the conference standings.
The first of two CWC-East matchups with the Thunderbirds this season included a pair of early lead changes. A pair of 3-pointers from Oliver Fraaza turned a 9-6 deficit into a 12-9 lead and the Chargers never trailed again.
Wittenberg-Birnamwood headed to the locker room with a 27-20 halftime lead. The Thunderbirds cut the lead to two points twice in the second half but never got any closer.
A 15-4 run down the stretch helped the Chargers pull away for their fifth CWC-East win.
Fraaza led all players with 18 points, while Zandyr Barke and Kaden Yaeger also finished in double figures with 15 and 11 points, respectively. R.J. Opperman led the Thunderbirds with 17.
Coach Garrett Rogowski wanted to see how his team would respond following a lopsided home loss.
“This group I’m coaching this year has really responded well to the things we’re asking them to do,” he said. “We played a bad game on Tuesday night against Bonduel. We didn’t value the basketball and turned it over a lot. A lot of our practice time this week was spent on making corrections offensively. The boys were excited to see how those corrections transfer to game play.
“That’s the great thing about coaching high school athletics. They’re kids. They do things well, and they make mistakes. You can learn a lot from losing. You have to move forward and get better. You have to have a short-term memory in sports. You have to move on to the next game and the next play.”
