Ramblers climb past Macks at free throw line

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By JON WEISBROD mailto:jon.weisbrod@lee.net
Saturday, February 9, 2008 1:17 AM CST

Time after time, Eau Claire Regis followed a made 3-pointer with a self-promoting first pump and a holler aimed at drawing attention to the act of making the shot.

To the McDonell boys basketball team, those first pumps might as well been jabs to to gut.

The resilient Macks absorbed and countered blow after blow in the first half, but ran out of gas late in a 74-67 loss Friday night in West Cloverbelt Conference action.

“The kids took this one pretty hard,” McDonell coach Archie Sherbinow said. “I think it’s good that it stings though. That just shows how much they wanted to win. We had this one in our teeth. We could taste it, but we just came up short in the end.”

McDonell (11-7, 9-5 WCC) generated its largest lead of the game in the second quarter after Landon Bresina’s lay-up made the score 31-27 with 4 minutes, 36 seconds remaining.

Then the 3-point flurry began.

The Ramblers (16-2, 14-0) manufactured a 12-1 run over the next two minutes, nine of those points coming from downtown.

“A couple times I just looked up and said ‘wow,’ how many of those are they going to make?” Sherbinow said. “We lost (Adam) Ganske in the zone and he made us pay. He’s a good shooter.”

Ganke, a sophomore transfer from Chetek, buried two 3-pointers in the run and Nezworski had the other, both reacting as though they had just nailed game-winning shots.

That, however, was far from the truth.

The Macks finished the half on an 8-2 run which included two bombs from senior John Olson.

The Ramblers dominated the third stanza, seizing a 59-49 lead heading into the final frame.

McDonell opened the fourth with a 14-2 rally, capped off by a game-tying 3-pointer by Derek Watton with 3 minutes, 51 seconds left.

The visitors responded and quieted the raucous crowd with a 11-4 spurt to end the game, most of which came from the free throw line.

“We had our chances there late,” Sherbinow said. “You have to credit Regis though, they took us out of our game. We haven’t seen the 1-3-1 (zone defense) in eight or nine games, so that fooled us a little. I was happy with some of the looks we got against it, we just couldn’t convert.”

One of those opportunities came with the Macks trailing 69-65 with 1 minute, 30 seconds left when Watton snuck behind the zone and botched an uncontested lay-up. From that point on, Regis salted the game away at the line, going 5-for-6 in the span.

Much of the game for McDonell was played without floor-burning guard Jarrod Martell, who picked up his third personal foul at the 1:23-mark of the first quarter.

“That hurt for, sure,” Sherbinow said. “Any time you take a huge part like that out of our 10-man rotation, it’s going to affect how we play.“

As usual, the offensive production was spread out for the Macks. Nine players scored, seven of which tallied at least seven points. Bresina led the way with 11 as Watton and Jon Schoch chipped in with 10 apiece. Olson and Tony Bischel scored nine points each, all from beyond the arc.

Nezworski led the way for the Ramblers with 19. Ganke finished with 16.