The Shawano Community High School boys basketball team is doing everything in its power to stay in the Bay Conference race.
The Hawks entered Tuesday night’s game at Denmark with two conferences losses and were tied for third. With first-place Luxemburg-Casco and second-place Seymour squaring off, the Shawano game was huge. The Hawks played with urgency, and that made all the difference.
Shawano drained 11 3-pointers — including five each from Jack Lacy and Erick Carl — and held a double-digit lead the entire second half in cruising to a 69-51 victory.
“We keep needing to have statement wins and to just keep getting better every game we play,” Shawano senior guard Zach Sousek said. “Tonight was a huge one and we came out and won by 20 or so.”
Shawano also got great news from the Luxemburg-Casco vs. Seymour game as the Thunder knocked off the host Spartans, 44-43. That means Shawano is just one game back in the conference race at 6-2. Seymour and Luxemburg-Casco sit atop the standings at 7-1.
“That’s a huge game for us knowing that we’re one game back from them,” Sousek said. “We play Seymour next Tuesday, so that’s a confidence booster. We’re finally starting to get back healthy and really mesh together.”
Shawano coach Chris Kellett isn’t too worried about the conference race with eight games still remaining.
“We’re not thinking about conference right now, to be honest with you,” Kellett said. “We’re just trying to go one game at a time, and hopefully by the end of the year we’ll be playing our best ball for the playoffs, because we have bigger goals than just conference. … Obviously, a conference championship would be great, but we’re going one game at a time.”
Shawano (11-2) was able to earn the big win against Denmark because of its strong shooting. The Hawks hit over 50 percent from the field and were 11-for-17 from 3-point range. Lacy finished with a game-high 20 points and Carl had 18 off the bench. The two players missed just three of their 13 shots from 3 on the night.
“Those two guys have it in them to do it,” Kellett said. “Erick’s been doing it, and he’s a freshman, but he’s not playing like one. Jack Lacy needs to be more aggressive and tonight he was. Those two were the catalysts for us on the offensive end.”
Sousek, who scored 13 points, and his teammates were trying to get Lacy and Carl the ball in rhythm on spot-up 3-pointers all night since they had the hot hand.
“I thought they were really confident and we were getting them open looks,” Sousek said. “When you know you can make a shot like that and you shoot it confidently, normally it goes in, and that happened tonight.”
Denmark had a difficult time closing out on the Shawano shooters.
“We talked that 32 and 34 were their shooters, you need to close out,” Denmark coach Cody Stelmach said. “We kept getting stuck underneath the screens, and you give them open looks like that, they’ll step into it and bury it.”
Shawano trailed 6-4 early, but ended the first quarter on an 11-0 run. Carl drained a 3-pointer at the buzzer to cap the rally.
Carl hit another 3-pointer to make it 20-10 in the second, and Jack Lacy nailed a 3 to push Shawano’s lead to 26-14 with 3:18 remaining. The Hawks took their biggest lead, 15 points, as Lacy was good again from 3 as Shawano took a 34-19 lead into halftime.
Shawano increased its lead in the second quarter by six points even with leading scorer Zeke Gueths on the bench all eight minutes with two early fouls.
“That’s why Jack Lacy was so big in that second quarter,” Kellett said. “When Erick Carl hit some shots, it opened up things quite a bit.”
Denmark (5-8, 4-4 Bay) cut its deficit to 41-31, but Lacy again hit a 3, his fifth of the game, and that spurred a 12-0 Shawano run. Carl wasn’t going to be outdone by his teammate. He hit back-to-back open 3-pointers to make it 50-31 with 1:56 left in the third.
The Vikings, which got a team-high 15 points from Tanner Umentum, could never get over a double-digit deficit the entire second half.
“Every time they cut it to about 10, we ended up running some good offense, either a set that we called or good motion and we were able to capitalize off of a couple mistakes,” Kellett said.
Sousek got aggressive off the drive and scored a hoop, and Shawano led 60-38 with 4 minutes remaining in the game. The Hawks were 8-for-12 in the fourth quarter from the free-throw line.
story created on Tuesday 1/20/2015 at 10:24:06 pm by Roger Bartel
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