Kuhn part of high-scoring all-star win

KIWANIS BORDER BASH

Medford’s Peyton Kuhn is used to putting on some offensive displays as the school’s all-time leading scorer in boys basketball.

Even he had to be amazed a little bit by the totals he and the Northern Wisconsin All-Star team put up June 9 at the seventh annual Kiwanis Classic Border Bash, held at Northland Pines High School.

Northern Wisconsin beat Northern Michigan 172-114 in, by far, the most lopsided game in the all-star series, which had been tied three games apiece going into last week’s game.

Kuhn had a modest eight points on two-of-10 shooting from the field. His two makes came from 3-point range. The game featured 26-minute halves, so it was 16 minutes longer than a typical high school game.

Still, the Wisconsin team scored an amazing 86 points in each half and hit 100 with 23 minutes still left. It was 86-55 at the half.

“It was pretty amazing,” Kuhn said. “The halves were longer by eight minutes. I don’t know, it seemed like there was a little bit of defense in the beginning. Definitely not as hard as coach Brown would want. He’d be yelling at us.”

Kuhn, of course, was referring to his Medford head coach Ryan Brown, who he will be joining for another prestigious all-star honor in July, the Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Senior All-Star Games.

Ashland’s Devon Powell led the Wisconsin team with 33 points and Abbotsford’s Cade Faber turned heads with 25 points, including a handful of dunks.

“He’s a kid that I’ve heard about a little bit,” Kuhn said of Faber. “I had never met him before that so that was kind of cool.”

Kuhn and three Rhinelander Hodags represented the Great Northern Conference on the Wisconsin team, which was coached by Dan Witter of Wisconsin Rapids.

Rhinelander big man Travis Towne had 17 points and guard Ross Skeen had 14.

Hunter Ingels of Winneconne had 29 points for the Wisconsin team, including seven 3-pointers.

“It was pretty fun,” Kuhn said. “Lots of good players. I knew a bunch of the kids so it was cool to see them and play with them on the same team. I felt like I did pretty good. It was just about having fun out there with a bunch of the guys. It was a good time.”

Christian Hocking of Jeffers High School led the Northern Michigan team with 29 points. Kam Karp of Marquette added 23.

“There wasn’t really a lot of offense,” Kuhn said. “There was a lot of racing down the court, one pass and one shot. It was pretty easy to click. It was fun to make some cool plays with those guys.”

The Northern Wisconsin girls team also won in the first game of the night, 108-99, to also break a 3-3 tie with Northern Michigan in its favor. Rhinelander’s Ryan Clark coached that team.

The games are normally played at Gogebic Community College in Ironwood, Mich. but were moved to Eagle River this year where there were fewer COVIDrelated restrictions.