Luxemburg-Casco smothered Shawano’s young guards with full-court pressure off made baskets Tuesday, forcing 27 turnovers en route to a 62-40 boys basketball win at the Shawano Sun Drop Shootout at the Kress Events Center on the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay campus.
Shawano couldn’t dig out of a double-digit deficit late in the first half.
“We just weren’t playing our press break the way we should be playing,” Shawano coach Dave Ambrosius said. “Obviously, they’re a fantastic team and they’ve got some talented players over there and their press just caused us problems all night long. We never really got a handle on it.”
Shawano did solid work against Luxemburg-Casco sharpshooter Jake Zeitler. The senior came into the game averaging 24.4 points per night, but was held to one field goal and 5 points.
“We did a good job stopping him. Adam Bartz did a good job on him,” Ambrosius said. “We had our help-side guys there. But they’re not a one-person team; they’ve got athletes all over the floor. They’ve got other guys that can score, and it was the other guys that beat us tonight.”
Freshman Nathan Coisman, who entered the game averaging 7.4 points, scored 18 points and pulled down 11 rebounds. Bryce TeKulve added 12 points.
Luxemburg-Casco coach John Hampton wasn’t banking on Zeitler to score a lot after the Spartans dropped a close 63-62 game to West De Pere the night before. Zeitler was needed in other ways than just scoring.
“What we asked Jake to do tonight is play defense and be our leader,” Hampton said. “We didn’t ask him to score because sometimes people think he has to do that, and he doesn’t. That’s just a testament to the type of kid he is. He did what he was asked to do.”
Luxemburg-Casco (4-2) jumped out to an 11-3 lead before back-to-back baskets from Zeke Gueths and Cole Nelson cut it to a 14-13 deficit midway through the first half. That’s when the Spartans went to work. Getting out on the fastbreak, Luxemburg-Casco went on a 15-2 run to go up 29-15.
A 3-pointer by Gueths got Shawano (3-5, 2-1 Bay) back within single digits at 29-20 with 2:52 left in the opening half. It was Shawano’s shot to get back in the game.
“That was definitely our chance, but then defensively we just didn’t get it done,” Ambrosius said. “We let some guys get loose and let them get some offensive rebounds and second-chance opportunities just really hurt us tremendously.”
Up 35-24 at half, the Spartans extended their lead with a 10-2 run to open up a 19-point advantage. Shawano, which shot 40 percent from the field, compared to Luxemburg-Casco’s 33 percent, could only drop its deficit to 16 points with six minutes as the Hawks tallied just 16 second-half points.
Gueths finished the night with a team-high 16 points, but had just eight shots in the game, two in the second half.
Nelson hit two 3-pointers and scored 11 points.
Ambrosius wants more balanced scoring from his team.
“We still struggle to get consistency from some of our guys,” Ambrosius said. “We still trying to figure out our roles a little bit, we’re still trying to figure out what it takes to win at the varsity level.”
Ambrosius is chalking the loss up as a learning experience for his team.
“I think we learn there’s still work to be done,” Ambrosius said. “We’re a young basketball team and we still have a lot of talent there, but we need to execute better, that’s the biggest takeaway. We have to execute the game plan and know what we’re in all the time and know our matchup.”
The loss is Shawano’s third in a row, all against nonconference opponents.
“We’re definitely going to be more battle-tested because of our nonconference schedule, which I like,” Ambrosius said. “That’s something you want when we schedule our opponents for the upcoming year. We want to challenge ourselves, and tonight we challenged ourselves and they got the better of us tonight.”
Luxemburg-Casco (62)
Jandrin 2 3-8 8, Zeitler 1 2-2 5, Coisman 8 2-2 18, TeKulve 4 2-2 12, Kanz 2 2-4 6, Ronsman 1 0-0 2, Deprey 2 1-1 5, Otradovec 2 2-2 6
Shawano (40)
Richards 1 0-0 3, Nelson 4 1-2 11, Bartz 0 0-2 0, Kohl 1 0-0 2, Gueths 6 3-4 16, Lacy 2 0-0 5, Belongia 1 0-0 3.
Luxemburg-Casco 35 27 – 62
Shawano 24 16 – 40
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