Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

WEST BRANCH – Often times coaches will play off the importance of a mid-season win. Even one over a rival atop the conference standings.

Jason Kern made no such bluff after his West Branch squad held off Class 2A seventh-ranked Regina 56-54 on Tuesday in a battle for the top-spot in the River Valley Conference South Division in West Branch.

Make no mistake this was a biggie and Kern and the Bears knew it.

“That’s huge for us,” Kern said. “They took us out in football, they beat us last year twice and it was kind of a little mental barrier that we needed to overcome and we finally overcame it.”

Regina handed West Branch its only loss of the football season in a 1A quarterfinal in November.

Last season the Regals were one of only three teams to knock off the Bears in basketball winning both meetings including a 55-48 win in West Branch.

On Tuesday the Bears got a little bit of payback.

Jeff Bowie had a double-double with 20 points and 15 rebounds and Tanner Lukavsky added 19 points and seven boards as West Branch improved to 9-1 and 8-1 in RVC play with its eighth win in a row.

“They way they knocked us out of the playoffs that definitely wasn’t a loss we expected to take,” Bowie said. “It stunned us a little more than we expected it to and I feel like that came out a little bit tonight when you see all the football guys out there getting after it. It helped us in the long run I guess in basketball but it definitely hurt during football.

West Branch trailed only once, at 6-5 in the first quarter, and led by as many as 16 but had to survive a furious Regina rally spurred by all-state Masen Miller.

Miller had a game-high 35 points and combined with junior Ashton Cook to account for all 54 Regina points as the Regals dropped to 7-2.

“We have to get other guys more comfortable stepping up and knocking shots down,” Regina coach Jared Galpin said. “We knew guys besides Ashton and Masen to knock shots down and they see it, they know it and they will own it. We will use this to get better.

West Branch closed the first quarter with a 12-2 run that was capped by a buzzer-beating 3-pointer by senior point guard Matt Whaley to take a 17-8 lead.

The Bear lead ballooned to 33-17 at halftime when Gavin Hierseman canned a corner 3-pointer to beat the halftime buzzer.

“They are the best shooting team in our league and we talked about that coming in and we didn’t execute our game plan the way that we wanted to in the first half,” Galpin said. “They made shots and they are a good shooting team.”

Lukavsky provided an early offensive boost for the Bears, scoring 14 of his 19 points in the opening half.

The 6-foot-2 senior entered averaging eight points per game but hit 5-of-8 field goal attempts including a pair of 3-pointers in the opening half.

“Our coaches have been telling me all year to shoot my shots but there have been some games where I only take one or two shots,” Lukavsky said. “You can’t score too many points like that.”

Miller hit a 3-pointer to close the third quarter that cut the lead to 41-34.

West Branch still led by double figures with under five minutes to play when Miller went to work.

The senior point guard scored the final 14 Regina points, twice cutting the lead to three with 3-pointers.

“I knew that they were going to lay down, they are a ranked team and teams like that don’t lay down so we knew we had to stay on the gas and we did enough to get the win,” Bowie said. “Masen Miller is a great player and he hits difficult shots, that’s what he does and you have to respect that.”

A 3-pointer by Miller with 2:03 left cut the lead to 51-48 but Bowie answered with an emphatic two-handed slam on the other end and Whaley hit one or two free throws following a Regina turnover on its ensuing possession.

“When he catches on the block and goes straight to the rim that’s what we are trying to enforce with him,” Kern said of Bowie. “He has really taken that and gone with it and keeping all his moves simple and getting straight to the hoop.”

Miller made one last gasp effort, cutting the lead to 54-51 with his seventh 3-pointer of the game with 1:01 left but the Bears hit two free throws and forced a pair of Regina turnovers down the stretch.

“That’s a big win for us,” Lukavsky said. “That’s a game against a ranked team that we weren’t supposed to win and we found a way to win it anyway.”

Miller scored 26 of his game-high 35 points in the second half, including 16 in the fourth quarter, and finished 11-of-19 from the field including 8-of-12 from 3-point range despite being harassed by Whaley and a West Branch box-and-one for most of the night.

“We really wanted to make him work for everything he got,” Kern said. “He had 35 but he worked very hard for every point he got tonight.”

Cook finished with 19 points and 14 rebounds for Regina which had a four-game winning streak against West Branch come to an end.

“I really applaud the effort in the second half because we dug ourselves a 16-point hole and we had our chances to get it to one possession multiple times, we just didn’t get it done,” Galpin said. “I told them the second half team is the team I expect and it’s who we are. The first half team is a team that we are not we just have to get more consistent.”

West Branch              17  16   8   15  –  56

Regina                         8    9   17  20  –  54

West Branch (56) – Matt Whaley 1-3 2-5 5, Trey Eagle 1-7 1-2 3, Thomas Gould 0-1 0-0 0, Gavin Hierseman 1-7 0-0 3, Tanner Lukavsky 6-10 4-4 19, Jeff Bowie 7-10 6-10 20, Simon Palmer 3-6 0-0 6, Team 19-44 13-21 56.

Regina (54) – Danny Molony 0-3 0-0 0, Masen Miller 11-19 5-7 35, Casey Daniel 0-1 0-0 0, Coltrae Kerschen 0-4 0-0 0, Chase Becker 0-2 0-0 0, Ashton Cook 6-15 7-12 19, Josh Dutchik 0-1 0-0 0, Andrew Wiese 0-1 0-0 0, Team 17-46 12-19 54.

3-point field goals – ICR 8-23 (Miller 8-12, Molony 0-3, Daniel 0-1, Kerschen 0-3, Cook 0-4), WB 5-17 (Whaley 1-1, Eagle 0-3, Gould 0-1, Hierseman 1-4, Lukavsky 3-7, Palmer 0-1). Rebounds – ICR 35 (Cook 14), WB 30 (Bowie 15). Turnovers – ICR 12, WB 11. Total fouls – ICR 19, WB 15. Fouled out – ICR (Becker), WB (Hierseman). Technical fouls – None.

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