silenced them by hitting back-to-back ….

silenced them by hitting back-to-back 3s from the same spot on the right wing. His third 3 put Medford up 4841, his fourth opened up a 10-point lead at 53-43 and his fifth made it 58-46 with 10 minutes to go. Baumgartner scored on a nice post move, Metz scored off a Baumgartner assist in transition, Hraby scored on a back cut and Baumgartner assist and Kleist got a three-point play off a Baumgartner assist to open up a 68-53 lead with 5:55 left. It was 70-55 when Lakeland made its late run behind three 3s from Larsen and one each from Carter Quade and Ashton Anderson.

While it may have looked like a concerted effort to get Hraby going in the second half, Brown said his open looks were a result of well-run offense and the junior did a good job of knocking them down.

‘More of the effort was let’s just be patient in our offense and try to break down the defense,” Brown said. “When we start to think about what we’re doing out there and who we’re trying to get open and we move the ball three or four times, we’re going to get guys wide open.”

Hraby hit seven of 14 shots from the field overall and added four rebounds, two assists and a steal. Baumgartner had six rebounds, five assists and two steals. Metz was a key figure as well with a 12-point, 10-rebound double-double that included two assists. Kleist had nine points and three assists. Rudolph scored five points and had seven rebounds and three assists. Not to be overlooked were the six points apiece Gierl and Steliga provided off the bench.

“There were some big points in the first half from Charlie Gierl and Nick Steliga,” Brown said.

Brayden Wiczek led Lakeland with 16 points. Larsen hit five of seven 3s to score 15 points, while Will Fortier added 15 points to go with seven rebounds and three assists.

Medford shot a solid 47.4% from the field, including 18 of 28 on two-point shots. The Raiders also outrebounded Lakeland 34-26, an improvement from the 71-69 loss to Chippewa Falls on Nov. 29.

“We were probably better on weakside rebounding and just going to get them,” Brown said. “So that was something we really emphasized. But we also really emphasize closeouts and I didn’t think we were great on that. We gave up middle a lot off of our closeouts. We were slow on our rotations on the bottom. They did a couple of things against us to see how we’d rotate and that’s what killed us on the weak side.

“We just have to get to the point where those last five minutes is where it’s winning time,” he added. “That’s what we’ve traditionally been able to do is really just shut teams down. We haven’t done that in the first two games, so we’ll keep working on it.”