RIB LAKE BOYS BASKETBALL - Rib Lake’s second-half surge impressively knocks out Athens

RIB LAKE BOYS BASKETBALL

The Rib Lake boys basketball team still has work to do when it comes to crossover games with the Marawood Conference’s South Division, but the Redmen couldn’t have gotten off to a much better start within its North Division Tuesday.

Locked into a good back and forth battle with host Athens for the first twothirds of the game, the Redmen kept attacking and finally wore out the Blue Jays down the stretch, going on a gameending 32-11 run and turning a one-point deficit into a convincing 69-49 win over the program that has won the last three North Division titles.

With all of its pieces in place for the first time this season, Rib Lake improved to 4-2 overall behind 29 points from its main man Jackson Blomberg, but got solid contributions from all of its main rotation guys offering glimpses of what head coach Todd Henderson’s team believed it could be when the season began.

Now 1-2 in the Marawood, Rib Lake actually sits in an early four-way tie for first place in the North. The Redmen broke an eight-game losing streak to their southern neighbors that began at the end of Rib Lake’s 2019-20 conferencechampionship season.

Rib Lake trailed through much of Tuesday’s first half, but forged ahead 2420 following a Blomberg score in the post and a Dominic Quednow steal and score. Athens came back and tied it. The Redmen took the lead back at 30-28 with 21 seconds left when Andrew Wudi grabbed a defensive rebound and fired a long pass to Blomberg, who split two defenders and got to the rim.

A six-point lead in the opening moments of the second half vanished when Blue Jay Andrew Schaer drilled back-toback 3-pointers to give his team a 38-37 lead.

That’s when Rib Lake took over for good.

Blomberg started the game-ending surge with a 3-pointer that put Rib Lake ahead for good with 13:13 to go. He scored in transition off a nice feed from Quednow, then Quednow’s rebound basket, a Blomberg triple and a Jed Henderson 3-pointer from the top of the key off an inbound play suddenly made it 50-38 with 9:55 left.

Switching between man-to-man and its 1-3-1 zone through much of the game, Rib Lake settled on the man defense down the stretch and got consistent stops with it. Overall, Athens shot just 33.3% from the field (19 of 57) after a strong start and turned the ball over 19 times. The Redmen got rebounds on both ends of the floor, holding a solid 41-29 edge on the boards. They continued to execute on offense and find the open man, open shot or open lane to the basket, closing the game out with six inside points from Quednow and a three-point play from Blomberg that pushed the lead to 20 for the first time at 66-46. Blomberg’s big night ended with one more 3-ball from the left corner.

Rib Lake shot 48.4% from the field (30 of 62) and scored 48 of its 69 points in the paint.

Quednow scored 14 points, Donovan Sutherland had 10 in his first outing of the season and then everyone else chipped in. Henderson scored five points, Wudi and Seth Borchardt scored four each and Talon Scheithauer hit an early 3.

Athens got little outside of Schaer’s 27 points. Riley Schultz-Becker scored seven.

Quednow missed a double-double by one rebound. Wudi had nine assists and eight rebounds. Blomberg had seven rebounds and three steals. Sutherland had five boards, three steals and two assists.

Rib Lake gets another North rival Friday when it hosts Abbotsford at 7:15 p.m. A big one follows Tuesday when the Redmen go to Prentice for another 7:15 p.m. start. Both the Falcons and Buccaneers are also in the 1-2 North mix, along with Athens.

Marathon 76, Rib Lake 57

Marathon’s 6-9 senior Grant Warren had a monster double-double with 24 points and 18 rebounds, but Marathon’s perimeter players had a bigger role in getting the Red Raiders out to a 26-6 lead, a gap Rib Lake didn’t come close to closing Thursday in a 76-57 home loss.

Red Raider Tyler Underwood hit Rib Lake with eight points and a pair of early 3s as Marathon opened the game with a 14-2 run. His teammates got some turnovers, some offensive rebounds and got to the rim to put Rib Lake in early foul trouble as the lead grew to 20 not even nine minutes in.

Rib Lake actually outscored Marathon by one point the rest of the way, but the damage was done as the Red Raiders improved to 4-0 at the time and got their second Marawood win of the winter.

The Redmen made a bit of a run and closed within 14 late in the first half. Wudi’s steal led to an easy bucket for Blomberg, Henderson got a rebound bucket and Blomberg scored off a steal to make it 32-17. Blomberg’s 3 made it 37-23 and Quednow scored off a Marathon turnover to make it 42-28.

But Warren made his presence known with a two-handed dunk off a True Thurs assist and got a three-point play off it with 16.7 seconds left. That put Marathon up 45-28 at the half.

Warren scored 14 of his points in the second half, including two dunks and a 3-pointer. The second of those dunks was a three-point play off a pretty high-low pass from Jaden Koeller and made it 6340 with 9:47 left. Marathon led by as many as 26 in the half before Rib Lake did get on a late surge to get within 67-53 on two Henderson free throws with 5:22 left. But Warren scored again inside, Thurs got a three-point play off an offensive rebound and Koeller scored to get the lead back to 21.

Blomberg had 23 points, seven rebounds and three assists for the Redmen. Borchardt had 10 points and Wudi added eight to go with three rebounds and three assists. Quednow had six points, six rebounds and two assists. Scheithauer had a point and three assists.

Drew Woelfel and Andy Glennon scored 11 points for Marathon and Underwood finished with 10.

Marathon was 19 of 24 from the free throw line, while Rib Lake was eight of 15. Both teams hit five 3s. Marathon held a 42-34 edge in rebounding Rib Lake turned the ball over 16 times while Mara- thon had 18 miscues.