EVANSVILLE - Trailing 49-29 two minutes into the second half to the Border West Buccaneers, the Brandon-Evansville boys basketball team started making a run and cut its deficit down to seven points (55-48) with 11:25 remaining.
From that point on, Border West outscored B-E 28-13 to seal an 83-61 victory on Tuesday.
“We were just grinding, and that’s the silver lining to this game,” B-E head coach Trent Hintermeister said. “Nobody likes to lose, but I thought that we had a couple of guys who really took it upon themselves to be leaders, and that was fun.”
Border West (18-2, 16-0 Section 6A) is ranked No. 16 in the Class A Minnesota Basketball News poll (as of Feb. 8).
A big reason why the Chargers (6-14, 4-10 Section 6A) made the run that they did is because of the shooting of Tanner Riedel, who was one of two Chargers to score 15 points on the night.
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“He just did so many really good things and wasn’t just making shots,” Hintermeister said. “Defensively, he did well guarding Dylan Bainbridge and then rebounding. He's really kind of coming into his own, and we need that out of him.”
Riedel is a sophomore who has played some junior varsity games this season but has stepped up on varsity in big games, including B-E’s 68-64 overtime win over Parkers Prairie in January.
“For him, it's about confidence and believing that he can guard and play with the best players in the conference like Dylan Bainbridge,” Hintermeister said. “We had other kids play well too. I thought both Perlebergs (Riley and Brady) did a nice job. I thought our bench was ready to go. I thought we rebounded with a lot more effort and energy.”
Dezmond White, who just committed to play college basketball starting next fall at Gustavus Adolphus, also had 15 points for the Chargers despite picking up three fouls in the first four minutes of the game.
Border West’s press created some early B-E turnovers and led to a 42-point first half.
“I thought we did better later on handling their full court press jump trap,” Hintermeister said. “I thought we did a better job of being aware of what they were trying to do and how we can try to make sure that we handled it better.”
Clint Determan led the Border West offense with 29 points, while Dylan Bainbridge had 17 and Andrew Walker had 15.
“We were physical in this one, which you have to be against guys like Bainbridge and Determan,” Hiuntermiester said. “Those fellas are so good. To play one of the best teams in our whole section as tough as we did, there are some positives now.”
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Border West came into the night as the second-highest rated Section 6A South team in the QRF rankings on Minnesota-scores.net, behind Belgrade-Brooten-Elrosa (16-3, 1-0 Section 6A), while B-E is sixth out of the nine teams.
Due to incoming inclement weather, Tuesday’s game was bumped up from 7:15 p.m. to 4 p.m. This then canceled all the games for the younger basketball teams.
Hintermeister is optimistic and excited about the team’s youth.
“It's too bad that they didn't get to play; the weather took a couple of games away from them, so that was unfortunate,” Hintermeister said. “They're continuing to grow and work. You can see our varsity getting better, and that's a credit to our 9th and 10th and A and B teams, too, for showing up every day and just grinding and making not only themselves better but our older guys too.”
The Chargers are back at home on Friday, hosting Park Christian (8-13, 4-5 Section 6A) at 7:15 p.m.
Border West - 42 41 - 83
Brandon-Evansville - 29 32 - 61
BORDER WEST SCORING - Dylan Bainbridge, 17 ; Cole Gisford, 4 ; Brayden Hofer, 8 ; Holden Ranke, 6 ; Andrew Walker, 15; Caden Spilde, 2; Clint Determan, 29; Grant Dawson, 2
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BRANDON-EVANSVILLE SCORING - Micah Fuller, 2; Riley Perleberg, 5; Brady Perleberg, 2; Tanner Riedel, 15; Dezmond White, 15; Carter White, 2; Nathan Anderson, 5; Lucas Fuller, 9; Dustin Gillespie, 4; Aaron Gillespie, 2
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