Coach Jeff Heimke knew it would be tough for his Lena High School boys basketball team to defeat 2014 state runner-up Green Bay NEW Lutheran.
Playing without one of its leading scorers made it more difficult, and Lena lost 83-54 Friday in a WIAA Division 5 regional game.
Hunter Borchert, who averaged 13.2 points per game, sustained a high ankle sprain in the Wildcats’ 51-49 buzzer-beating win March 3 at Oneida Nation and was unavailable Friday.
Guards Connor Heise and Dalton Anderson did their best to fill the void with 17 points each.
“Going in to the game, we knew it was going to be a tough game,” Heise said. “We are undersized, and one of our better players got hurt. We had to give it all we got.”
Heise, who hit the 3-point buzzer beater against Oneida on his 16th birthday, scored 15 of his 17 points from the free-throw line Friday.
“He is a very talented kid,” Heimke said. “With Hunter out, he is the one that has to handle the ball the entire game. We don’t really have another true point guard.”
Lena led 8-5 before NEW Lutheran’s defense sparked a 10-0 run, including five points from 6-foot-3 senior Noah Gosse, who scored a game high 23 points.
“They are a very high-pressure man-to-man defense,” Heimke said. “We struggled handling that pressure.”
The Blazers’ pressure produced 25 fouls, and Lena converted 24 of 35 of free throws.
With Lena trailing 69-36, the 5-5 Anderson scored nine of his points in the final quarter.
“He is a tough kid,” Heimke said. “He started a lot of games for us last year when he was a freshman, when he was about 5 feet tall. He is a lot more comfortable this year and he is not going to back down no matter what size his competitor is.”
NEW Lutheran (13-11, 6-8 Packerland Conference) coach Mark Meerstein expected his team would be challenged by Lena’s quickness, telling his players to keep the ball in front of them and to penetrate inside.
“We tried to keep up with them and I felt we got a good couple of breaks. … I felt we took too many shots from the outside,” Meerstein said.
After the loss, Heimke was already looking ahead to next year. Lena (10-14, 5-11 Marinette & Oconto Conference) loses two seniors, Steve Rouer and Randy Schroeder, from this year’s squad.
“Our expectations next year are sky high,” Heimke said. “We are starting to get a feeling we can compete against anybody.”
Lena (54)
Anderson 4 7-8 17, Staidl 0 1-2 1, Rouer 5 1-2 11, Heise 2 13-15 17, Haney 2 2-2 7, Lange 0 1-5 1.
NEW Lutheran (83)
Schaefer 2 1-2 6, Natzke 4 0-0 10, Gosse 10 2-2 23, Lana 2 0-0 5, Lloyd 7 0-0 15, Falk 2 1-2 5, Wen 1 0-0 2, Siudzinski 2 3-4 7, McClellan 2 2-3 6, Kindt 1 2-2 4.
Lena 15 15 6 18 — 54
NEW Lutheran 26 21 22 14 — 83
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