Chiefs start off strong, fizzle out as game pushes on
By Dan Truttschel
Correspondent
A strong effort earlier in the week gave the Big Foot boys basketball team optimism and that trend would continue Tuesday night.
And for the first 10 minutes or so against visiting Evansville, the Chiefs were right there.
Unfortunately, Big Foot couldn’t quite sustain that momentum, and that’s when Evansville took over.
The Blue Devils’ three-headed monster of Brennen Banks, Zach Mielke and Kyle Rutowski combined for 65 points to lead Evansville to a 91-63 Rock Valley Conference crossover victory.
Big Foot fell to 5-7 overall and 3-5 in the RVC, while Evansville improved to 10-2 and 7-1.
“I thought we played a good first eight to 10 minutes and then struggled after that,” Big Foot coach Mike Dowden said. “We had some possessions of poor shot selection and costly turnovers that put them up double digits heading into the locker room (at halftime).”
Big Foot trailed by 13 points at the intermission and couldn’t claw back, as Evansville outscored the Chiefs 47-30 in the last 18 minutes.
“They came out and pushed it to 20-plus right away to start the second half,” Dowden said. “For as good as our energy has been the past few weeks, I thought it was lacking (Tuesday) night.”
Zak Greco led the Chiefs with 16 points on the strength of five 3-pointers followed by Michael Goralski with 14 points and Beau Cary with 11.
In the first game of the week, the Chiefs held a three-point halftime lead at Edgerton and extended that advantage in the second half en route to a 92-84 victory.
Big Foot leaders included Greco (20 points, four rebounds), Goralski (20 points, four rebounds, five assists, and three steals), Cary (19 points, 10 rebounds), Logan Eischeid (nine points) and Mark Schauf (four rebounds).
“I thought we came out with a lot of energy,” Dowden said. “(We) moved the ball well on offense and let our defense create turnovers that led to easy baskets in transition.”
Big Foot held 60-45 lead before Edgerton made a last push – but the Chiefs hung on.
“We didn’t do a very good job of closing the game after (we had the lead), but did make free throws down the stretch to finish it when we needed.”
Big Foot is back in action Friday night when it travels to Palmyra-Eagle, followed by a home non-conference matchup Monday, Jan. 25, against Southern Lakes Conference foe Elkhorn.
